BRIDGES

Cellular and neuronal dynamics, cognition, behaviour and social systems are usually examined with different experimental approaches and explanatory frameworks. BRIDGES brings these levels into a common research programme and focuses on the relations between them. It examines correspondence of observations across levels, changes during translation, the emergence of new properties, and how the social use of neurocognitive measures can affect the processes being measured. Mind and cognition provide a strong basis for this work because they connect biological organisation with information processing, behaviour and social systems. The research programme connects construction, modelling, validation, perturbation, translation and feedback. Engineered neuronal systems provide experimentally accessible settings in which defined forms of information processing can be established and manipulated. Formal cognitive models describe their performance and generate parameters that can also be estimated from human data. These parameters are compared with behavioural and neurophysiological measurements and tested through targeted interventions. In parallel, BRIDGES examines what happens when neurocognitive measures become embedded in clinical, organisational and societal contexts, where they may influence decisions and behaviour. BRIDGES also examines whether such use changes the context, the measured phenomenon or the interpretation of the measure itself.

Engineered neuronal tissue, the human brain, behaviour and social systems represent different levels of organisation. Neural recordings, behavioural tasks, clinical assessments and institutional data provide different forms of access to these levels. Formal cognitive models have a special role because they serve both as measurement instruments and as explicit hypotheses about the processes that generate behaviour. This distinction allows relations between levels to be formulated as testable hypotheses. Before such relations can be interpreted, the underlying quantities must be measured with adequate reliability and  sensitivity. Even a robust correspondence does not  by itself establish that two systems rely on the same mechanism, since different lower level configurations can produce similar outcomes. The programme examines three closely connected aspects of these relations. It tests whether quantities observed in different systems can be treated as expressions of the same phenomenon. It investigates how information and interpretation change when findings move between neuronal activity, formal models, human measurements and social or institutional systems. It also asks when properties at a higher level require an explanation that cannot be expressed adequately at the lower level. These aspects can occur together at the same interface. The recursive structure of BRIDGES further allows the consortium to study how processes at higher levels alter the conditions under which lower level phenomena are produced and measured.

Schematic overview of organisational levels, measurement systems and the relations between them, illustrating cross-level correspondence and information transfer within the BRIDGES framework.

This pillar develops experimental systems in which neurocognitive processes can be constructed and perturbed in living neuronal networks. Neuronal cultures are combined with engineered environments, multielectrode arrays, biofabrication and computational analysis. They interact with virtual environments and are trained on defined tasks that can later be implemented in human experiments. The systems are deliberately reduced and experimentally accessible. This makes it possible to study specific forms of information processing under controlled conditions and to test how changes in network organisation or stimulation affect performance. Common tasks and formal models provide the connection to the other pillars.

This pillar provides the formal models and measurement principles required for comparisons between engineered systems and humans. Task performance is translated into parameters that can be related to neural measurements from the same individual or experimental system. Cognitive control offers a concrete shared research object, with established conflict paradigms providing comparable tasks across settings. Modern inference methods support reliable estimation at the level of individuals and larger cohorts. The work therefore addresses both the quality of the measurements and the validity of the underlying model. Parameters are tested for stability across tasks and measurement systems and for their predicted response to experimental perturbation.

This pillar studies how neurocognitive mechanisms are expressed in human neurophysiological data, with a particular focus on recordings obtained during epilepsy monitoring. Long term scalp EEG can be combined with intracranial EEG and microwire recordings, giving access to neural dynamics at different spatial and temporal scales. These recordings also show how strongly interpretation depends on measurement context. Medication, seizures, recovery, behavioural state, electrode placement and clinical constraints can all influence the relation between recorded activity and inferred cognitive processes. BRIDGES uses these data to determine how signals change across recording scales and conditions and how computational descriptors relate to clinically meaningful phenomena.

This pillar studies how neurocognitive measures and interventions enter social practice and how their meaning changes when they become relevant for organisations, markets or governance. Workplaces and emerging applications of cognitive measurement provide initial empirical settings. Participatory research, stakeholder engagement and social modelling will be used to examine how individual responses can develop into organisational or institutional effects. The same neurocognitive measure may be used for personal optimisation, occupational safety, clinical purposes or performance assessment, while its consequences and governance requirements differ substantially between these settings. Societal use is therefore part of the scientific problem itself. Once a measure affects decisions or incentives, it can change behaviour and may also change the validity or interpretation of the original measurement.

BRIDGES concentrates on the relations between levels of organisation and scientific description, treating social systems as an integral level of explanation rather than merely a context of application. Its central question concerns how neurocognitive phenomena and their scientific representations change when they move between engineered systems, human cognition and society. The programme therefore includes both the validity of relations across these levels and the effects that arise when measurements are used outside their original experimental context.