We do fundamental research in psychology and neuroscience to understand how the mind represents knowledge.

How do we think about things that we cannot see, hear, or touch?

How do we think about the past or plan for the future? How can we represent other people's minds, desires, and beliefs? How do we retrieve, maintain, and manipulate information in our mind's eye?

We are exploring the possibility that the mental machinery evolved to represent and navigate space has been recycled to represent and navigate conceptual information and memories.

How do we make sense of words?

How is it that meaningless strings of written signs or arbitrary sounds are related to concepts? How do we retrieve and manipulate conceptual knowledge?

Our research follows a semiotic framework according to which meaning is generated by iconic, indexical, and symbolic processes that require the interaction of memory, language, and the sensorimotor system.

What is the difference between conscious and unconscious cognition?

What is the role of consciousness in language processing, and its relation to semantics? Why is ChatGPT not yet conscious?

We think that our research on knowledge and semantics may help to provide an answer to these fundamental questions.