By Alice Damgaard Sprotte, AAU Communication and Public Affairs

Some people combine letters with certain colours, others develop special abilities in mathematics or have photographic memory. The brain processes everything we experience and sense – but the way we sense the world differs from person to person. Professor of philosophy Berit Oskar Brogaard is interested in this – the interaction between the brain, consciousness and senses is central to her research. Now she is nominated for an honorary doctorate from Aalborg University.

She specializes in cognitive neuroscience, philosophy of consciousness and philosophy of language, and her research includes synesthesia and savant syndrome. Synesthesia involves mixing different sensory impressions together – and for example seeing sounds, tastes touches – or most commonly: experiencing letters in colour. In short, savant syndrome is when a person has completely unusual abilities, for example, in music.

How we sense the world

At AAU, Berit Oskar Brogaard, as adjunct professor, contributes to research into how the brain categorizes the stimuli that humans experience and sense. Here she collaborates with the Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience to develop a new theoretical model that will now be tested in practice.

Head of the centre, Associate Professor Thomas Alrik Sørensen, is pleased that Berit Oskar Brogaard contributes to research at Aalborg University.

"We need new research in this area. It is not so well described how people categorize what we sense and whether, for example, we match what we experience with the categories we have in memory. Together we have proposed a model, Template Tuning Theory, in which information from the senses is matched with information in long-term memory, meaning that we largely sense the world through our experiences."

The researchers can, for example, measure people's response to stimuli by placing electrodes on the outside of the skull that measure the electrical activity when hearing a sound or receiving visual input. Here, research shows that there is a special signal when stimuli change, e.g. when a repeating tone changes to a new tone. This shows that it is essential for the brain to focus on changes in the environment. The researchers will test the new model by examining how the signal is affected by different degrees of experience.

"There is no manual for the brain when we are born. It must try to make head and tail of the input it receives, which probably also means that we – and thus our brains – experience the world very individually," explains Thomas Alrik Sørensen.

That's why we experience the scent of orange in different ways – some think of the southern sun, while others think of Christmas. It's about the memories and experiences we've stored in the brain and consciousness.

Strong international research network

Dean Rasmus Antoft is also pleased that such a strong capacity will receive an honorary doctorate: 

" Berit Oskar Brogaard has so far had a very impressive academic career, and with a unique profile across the natural sciences and humanities, where she works with brain research, linguistics and philosophy, she can contribute greatly to research at Aalborg University."

Professor Berit Oskar Brogaard has published numerous books and research articles with researchers from all over the world, and holds several international academic posts, including some from Australia and Norway, and her list of publications includes a large number of collaborations with different researchers across disciplines and geography.

In 2012 she became a professor at the University of Missouri, and since 2014 she has been a professor at the University of Miami, from 2019 also a Cooper fellow and now director of her own Brogaard Lab.