Mauricio J.D. Martins MD, PhD

External guest researcher

Department of Neurology
+49 341 9940-2220

Main Focus

I am interested in describing the mechanisms underlying the representation of hierarchies in the visual, musical, linguistic and motor domains; and the processes involved in the acquisition of those representations. Our research program, which includes behavioural and fMRI experiments, aims at characterising the domain-general and domain-specific computations involved in the representation of hierarchical structures, thus drawing a more empirically precise architecture of human cognition.

Curriculum Vitae

2006-2014 Language Research Laboratory, Lisbon Faculty of Medicine

2006-2008 Psychiatry Unit, Hospital de Santa Maria, Portugal

2010-2014 Department of Cognitive Biology, University of Vienna

2012-2014 Shared Neural Resources Research Cluster, University of Vienna and Medical University of Vienna

2014- Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig.

2014- Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin

2017- Department of Cognitive Neurology, University Hospital Leipzig

Selected publications

· Martins MD, Bianco R, Sammler D, Villringer A (2017) Fractals in Action: An fMRI study on the Generation of new Hierarchical Levels in Motor Sequences. bioRxiv. 232942; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/232942

· Martins MD, Gingras B, Puig-Waldmueller E., Fitch WT (2017). Cognitive representation of “musical fractals”: Processing hierarchy and recursion in the auditory domain. Cognition 161, 31–45

· Martins, M (2017). The Cognitive Architecture of Recursion: Behavioral and fMRI Evidence from the Visual, Musical and Motor Domains. In Proceedings of the 39th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (Eds. G. Gunzelmann, A. Howes, T. Tenbrink, & E. J. Davelaar), pp. 1920-1924. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

· Fischmeister, FP, Martins MD, Beisteiner, R, Fitch, WT. (2017). Self-similarity and recursion as default modes in human cognition. Cortex 97, 183 - 201

· Martins MD, Mursic Z, Oh J, Fitch WT (2015). Representing visual recursion does not require verbal or motor resources. Cognitive Psychology 77, 20-41

· Martins MD, Laaha S, Freiberger E, Choi S, Fitch WT (2014). How children perceive fractals: hierarchical self-similarity and cognitive development. Cognition 133, 10-24

· Martins M (2014). Recursion is not language domain-specific: interim results of a research program. In The Evolution of Language - Proceedings of the 10th International conference (Eds. Erica A Cartmill, Seán Roberts, Heidi Lyn, Hanna Cornish), pp.177-184. Singapore: World Scientific.

· Fitch WT, Martins MD (2014). Hierarchical Processing in Music, Language and Action: Lashley revisited. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1316, 87-104.

· Martins MD, Fishmeister F, Puig Waldmüller E, Oh J, Geissler A, Fitch WT, Beisteiner R (2014). Fractal Image Perception provides Novel Insights into Hierarchical Cognition. NeuroImage 96, 300-308.

· Martins MD (2012). Distinctive signatures of recursion. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 367, 2055-2064