Our mission
Our center explores how we organize our thoughts and make sense of new information through a fundamental cognitive process called latent cause inference. Every piece of information that enters our brain is first categorized as pertaining to something we already know about (an old latent cause) or something completely new (a new latent cause). Latent cause inference is fundamental for cognition, it affects how we perceive the world, remember events and make decisions. We study how differences in latent cause inference relate to mental health symptoms and the neural circuitry underlying latent cause inference.
Our team
Our center brings together ten research groups across Princeton University and Rutgers University. Our interdisciplinary team conducts research across clinical studies, computational modeling, neuroimaging and systems neuroscience to bridge the gap between observable symptoms and underlying neurocognitive mechanisms. By combining studies in humans and animals, we seek a comprehensive, multi-perspective, understanding of the neurocognitive mechanisms of latent cause inference.
Our partners
What is latent cause inference?
Latent cause inference refers to the cognitive process of inferring hidden or unobservable causes that explain observed patterns of events. As its core, it is a mathematical framework that uses Bayesian probability theory. This framework is powerful because it formalizes how humans can discover underlying structure in data without being explicitly told what to look for.
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