News & Updates

Studying Cognition from the Evolutionary Standpoint

Invited talk - on  National Science Day 28th Februrary 2026 at Government Institute of Medical Sciences, Greater Noida, INDIA

28th Feb 2026.

On the occasion of National Science Day, Anil Patnaik, Founder of Quest Research Center, delivered a keynote talk at the Annual Multidisciplinary Research Conclave organized by GIMS in Greater Noida. Centered on the theme “Translating Science into Real-World Impact on Healthcare,” the conclave brought together leading scientists, clinicians, and policymakers from premier institutions across India and abroad.

His lecture introduced a novel “Cognitive Framework for the Study of the Senses,” challenging the traditional hierarchy that places vision and hearing above other senses. He emphasized that so-called “lower” senses—smell, taste, and touch—are vital for biological grounding and survival, while vision and audition function as distal senses enabling abstraction and planning. 

Highlighting implications for clinical science, Patnaik underscored how imbalances between sensory grounding and cognitive abstraction may contribute to disorders such as schizophrenia. His framework advocates integrating embodied sensory data with modern diagnostic approaches, paving the way for more holistic and translational healthcare research.

QRC Team at MBCC 2025 International conference

8th June 2025

Conference on Mind, Brain and Consciousness was held at IIT Mandi, Himachal Pradesh, INDIA from 4th-7th June 2025. Our team had presented a paper on the topic " Perception of reality and illusion - An information-based theoretic model"

Paper on perception science accepted for Oral presentation at MBCC 2025

15th May 2025.

Are the colors we see merely illusions? Is the continuity of perception we experience from a series of moving frames that create a movie not real? How far can we rely on our subjective perceptions to understand the objective reality of the physical world? This is a contentious question, one that has been much debated in both science and philosophy. Our paper explores this intriguing and relevant topic from the perspectives of biology and information theory, yielding various insightful understandings of reality and illusion. Throughout the discussion, we conduct a critical analysis of the underlying conditions necessary to define something as reality or illusion, challenging current definitions from cognitive science and neuroscience paradigms while fitting into the same framework.

The talk will be given by QRC founder Mr. Anil Patnaik