Cas Coopmans has been awarded an NWO Veni grant

Comparing sentences and visual narratives

Humans have a remarkable capacity for combinatoriality—the ability to combine simple elements into complex, hierarchical structures. This capacity is most evidence in language, where even simple phrases (e.g., French wine and cheese) can be understood in different ways depending on how their elements are combined. However, combinatoriality is also found in other domains of human cognition, including music, math, and visual narratives, such as comic strips. Do these different cognitive domains rely on the same mechanisms? Cas will investigate this by studying how the brain processes the structure of sentences and visual narratives. Using magnetoencephalography (MEG) experiments, he will test whether the two cognitive domains rely on shared or separate brain networks. More specifically, the experiments aim to determine whether the combinatorial operations in language and visual narratives are shared, and whether their building blocks are encoded in the same way. This project will offer novel insights into a core principle of the human mind.

About the NWO Veni grant

The NWO Veni grant is aimed at researchers who have recently obtained their PhD. The grant allows recipients to conduct their own research for a period of three years. Cas' grant is part of the 2025 funding round.