The Synthetic Cognition and Reality Laboratory (SynCoRe Lab) is an interdisciplinary research environment dedicated to understanding how cognition emerges, operates, and adapts across biological and artificial systems embedded in immersive environments. The lab integrates cognitive neuroscience, explainable artificial intelligence (XAI), and virtual reality to study perception, decision-making, learning, and affect in controlled yet ecologically rich settings.

A core focus of SynCoRe Lab is immersive cognition in virtual environments. Building on an established body of VR-based cognitive neuroscience research, the lab develops and applies virtual reality paradigms combined with EEG and behavioral measures to investigate how cognitive and emotional processes unfold in dynamic, realistic worlds. This work addresses perception, embodiment, presence, affective processing, and decision-making under conditions that approximate real-world complexity while retaining experimental control.

A defining characteristic of the lab’s approach is its strong emphasis on explainable artificial intelligence (XAI). In particular, SynCoRe Lab develops and applies attribution-based methods such as the SHERPA framework, which uses model explanations to identify and interpret spatiotemporal neural contributions underlying cognitive processes. SHERPA enables mechanistic analysis of EEG data by revealing facilitative and suppressive neural dynamics directly from model attributions, complementing and extending traditional statistical approaches.

In parallel, SynCoRe Lab advances synthetic cognition through computational modeling and machine learning. Artificial agents and neural models are treated as synthetic cognitive systems whose internal representations and decision processes can be systematically compared with human neural and behavioral data. This allows the lab to investigate shared computational principles across biological and artificial cognition within a unified analytical framework. These research activities are closely integrated with education and training at NTNU. The lab aligns with and contributes to PSY3230 - The Psychology of Artificial Intelligence, a course that examines artificial intelligence systems from a psychological perspective, with a focus on cognition, emotion, learning, and human - AI interaction.

Overall, SynCoRe Lab aims to improve the ecological validity of psychological science by studying human cognition and behavior in immersive, realistic environments, using explainable AI as a principled modeling tool to support mechanistic interpretation rather than as an end in itself.