Thursday
19
March 2026
4:00 - 5:30 PM IST
Location
Room 004, School of Arts and Sciences
Central Campus
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How to think about the mind? Prediction, Adaptation and Language
Arts and Sciences Lecture Series
Ramesh Mishra
Professor
Dean, School of Medical Sciences
Head, Centre for Neural and Cognitive Sciences
University of Hyderabad
Speaker
Predictive processing has become a popular tag to define mental processes in the recent past especially in mind and brain sciences. As much as it is computational, it is also behavioural in the sense that, the dominant theories ground their central claims to sensory engagement with the world. Language as an evolutionary cognitive tool for the mind has been of special significance to many since it connects thoughts, actions and consciousness to the environment. This externalisation of the mind has important consequences for how we have come to think about cognitive processes generally. I would like to present arguments and provide empirical support, taking bilingualism and cognition as a model to show that multiple languages in the environment tagged to different individuals show us the flexibility of adapting. The proposed lecture will also include the elaboration of a recent model that connects environmental diversity to cognitive processes, which extends beyond the domain of language. I would claim, moving away from traditional orthodoxy that, cognition of individuals constrained by cultures and core abilities is a dynamical adaptive system grounded to cues in the environment.
Speaker
Ramesh Mishra
Ramesh Mishra is a cognitive scientist and Professor at the University of Hyderabad, where he serves as Dean of the School of Medical Sciences and Head of the Centre for Neural and Cognitive Sciences. His work examines how language, attention, and visual cognition interact in shaping the human mind. Extending beyond the laboratory, his research combines experimental methods such as eye-tracking and behavioural approaches to understand how people perceive, process, and cognise in diverse real-world contexts.
He has authored several influential books on cognitive science and bilingualism and has published extensively in leading international journals. Prof. Mishra has held visiting positions at prestigious institutions including the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Sapienza University of Rome, NTNU Norway, and Dalhousie University in Canada. Beyond his research, he plays an active role in shaping the field through editorial leadership and scholarly service. He serves as Chief Editor of the Journal of Cultural Cognitive Science, contributes to the editorial boards of several international journals, and is a Fellow of the Psychonomic Society.
