Peter Vedsted from Aarhus University has just received the Magda and Svend Aage Friederich Commemorative Scholarship. He receives the scholarship for his contribution to research within general medicine.

Let me hear your voice, and I’ll give you a diagnosis. While this might sound like science fiction, it’s not far off the goal of a research project at the Interacting Minds Centre. This is because people suffering from depression tend to speak monotonously, autistic patients speak mechanically, and schizophrenics speak tonelessly.

An interdisciplinary centre creating

new knowledge about human interaction

The Interacting Minds Centre for the Study of Cognition, Communication and Choice. Specific abilities for interaction are key to being human. Interactions affect our bodies, our minds, our brains and the world we live in. We are, however, only beginning to understand even the most basic mechanisms. Successful interaction is critical for cooperation, coordination and learning.

Professor Peter Hokland and his research team from Aarhus University and Aarhus University Hospital have received two grants to conduct research into the disease acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) – a cancer of the bone marrow and blood.

A new study published by Aarhus University gives the lie to the conventional wisdom that Americans are particularly critical of the welfare state, while Danes are particularly enthusiastic supporters of it. The truth is that Danes and Americans agree in general about who they are prepared to support, because we are all driven by the same primitive instincts.

How do our brains process the language that we hear? This is the kind of thing that is studied by associate professor Mikkel Wallentin from the Interacting Minds Centre. In his research he draws on his academic background in dramaturgy and cognitive semiotics, which he combines with brain scans.

Literature isn’t just enjoyable. It can be useful, too. Researchers at the Interacting Minds Centre regard literature as a form of mental technology which can create communities, thereby promoting social inclusion.

It’s hard to imagine this. But Andreas Roepstorff, sitting in front of me in a corner office with a view of the Nobel Park in Aarhus, was once a little boy sitting in a small cage with his legs crossed on the pedestrian precinct in Fredericia. He was holding a coloured plastic cube in his hands, and was twisting and turning it round and round. Many years have passed, and today he’s sitting on a white chair in his office in Aarhus. His hands are empty – or are they? Actually they aren’t empty at all. He’s got his hands full of all kinds of projects.

Ole Hilberg from Aarhus University (AU) and Aarhus University Hospital (AUH) is part of a research team that has just received a grant from InnovationsFonden (the Danish innovation foundation) to develop a test for tuberculosis.