Research Areas

I am interested in the interaction of vision with action. I study how our visual system controls spatial navigation and exploration, how eye movements and attention contribute to visual perception, and how we perceive actions of others. To approach these issues my lab combines behavioral and physiological experiments with computational modeling. I believe that a true understanding of a cognitive function is equivalent to being able to formulate a quantitative model.

Selected Publications

Zimmermann, E., Lappe, M. (2010) Motor signals in visual localization. Journal of Vision 10(6):2, 1–11

Hamker, F. H., Zirnsak, M., Calow, D. & Lappe, M. (2008). The peri-saccadic perception of objects and space. PLoS Comp. Biol. 4(2):e31

Lappe, M., Jenkin, M., Harris, L. R. (2007). Travel distance estimation from visual motion by leaky path integration. Experimental Brain Research 180:35-48

Lange, J. & Lappe, M. (2006). A model of biological motion perception from configural form cues. Journal of Neuroscience, 26(11):2894-2906.

Beintema, J. A & Lappe, M. (2002). Perception of biological motion without local image motion. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 99: 5661-5663.

Academic CV

1989 Diploma in Physics, Eberhard-Karls-University Tübingen
1990-1992 Guest Researcher at the National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, USA / PhD stipend from the Max-Planck Society
1992 Dr. rer. nat. (PhD) in Physics, University of Tübingen
1993-2002 Researcher at the Department of Zoology & Neurobiology, Ruhr- University Bochum
1998 Habilitation in Neurobiology, Faculty of Biology, Ruhr-University Bochum
Since 2002 Professor of Psychology at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster

Honours and Special Recognitions

1999 BioFuture Prize of the German Minister for Science and Technology