Marvin Maechler, PhD

What platform can we use to play this with you guys?

#JNeurosci: A functional MRI study from @maechlermarvin.bsky.social‬ et al. identify brain regions that might be the source of hemifield-specific capacity limits in attentional tracking of multiple moving objects.
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I have to thank a lot of people for their help with this, but for this post I will limit myself to my dissertation committee: @violastoermer.bsky.social @rolfslab.bsky.social @carolinerobertson.bsky.social and Peter Tse, who were incredibly supportive and provided guidance throughout this process.

Our research challenges previous explanations of hemispatial neglect and enhances our understanding of how the brain manages spatial attention and mental effort. Additionally, we identify regions that might be the source of hemifield-specific capacity limits in attentional tracking.

We show that the load-dependent responses differ between earlier visual areas, which prefer targets on the contralateral side, and later areas that respond to targets anywhere in the visual field.

Our findings reveal brain areas where effort-driven increases in activity are dependent on the visual hemifield where targets are tracked.

We investigated how attentional effort impacts brain activity. Effort (the number of targets in a multiple-object tracking task) parametrically drives activity in the attention system.

Hemifield Specificity of Attention Response Functions during Multiple-Object Tracking The difficulty of tracking multiple moving objects among identical distractors increases with the number of tracked targets. Previous research has shown that the number of targets tracked (i.e., load)...

I am excited to announce (belatedly) that my dissertation’s final chapter has been published in the Journal of Neuroscience! doi.org/10.1523/JNEU...