Department of Cognitive Science

The Department of Cognitive Science runs one of the oldest cognitive science departments in Poland. Cognitive Science in Toruń was established second, right after Cognitive Science in Poznań. However, it is Toruń’s researchers from a broad field of many different disciplines that are pioneers when it comes to creating the cognitive science environment. It was here that in 1995 Cognitive Science Colloquiums were initiated – cyclical meetings where representatives of disciplines dealing with such issues as cognition, mind, brain information processing, Artificial Intelligence, Neural Networks, language and perception, exchanged views and initiated joint scientific ventures. It was also here that the Polish Cognitive Science Society was established in 2000 and it has its headquarters to this day, and the employees of the Department have performed high functions in it.

The employees of the Department of Cognitive Science deal with the entire research spectrum related to the mind and cognition, including: digital humanism, mind models, mental representations, self-awareness, emotions, social and cultural cognition, neural correlates of cognitive processes, machine learning and neuroimaging. They conduct classes in Polish and English (sometimes also in German) in mindreading, methodology and empirical work, connectomics, advanced data analysis, cognitive psychology, evolutionary psychology, philosophy of mind, neuropsychology and neuroscience, and offer a wide range of optional electives, such as Consciousness from cognitive point of view, or The Space around us. Affordances and communication in peripersonal space or Mind as a predictive machine.