Dirk Bernhardt-Walther

How do we see style? In a recent series of experiments, Boger and Firestone ask: How do we perceive style?’. Their findings suggest that style perception relies on basic p…

"style is more than just an optional add-on for visual objects: it is part of visual processing and has consequences for how we perceive and respond to what we see"

Using generative AI to uncover how we attend to complex scene features

How well do traditional attention theories generalize to complex scene features?

@songaeun.bsky.social, @drmack.bsky.social & @dirkbwalther.bsky.social used AI-generated stimuli to find out.

👀 www.psych.utoronto.ca/news/using-g...

The Cognitive Science Research Community (CoRC) at the University of Toronto has several exciting events in store this year:
www.uc.utoronto.ca/cognitive-sc...

Join us for science and good company!

TASC 2026 Toronto-area meeting of researchers working on empirical aesthetics and creativity April 14th, 2026 Paul Cadario Conference CentreCroft Chapter House, University College 15 King's College Circle, T...

Announcing the Toronto Aesthetics Sciences and Creativity Conference 2026! TASC 2026 brings together researchers, scholars, and students from across the Greater Toronto Area with interest in empirical aesthetics, psychology of art, and the study of creativity.
sites.google.com/view/tasc2026/

A new study uses AI-generated stimuli to uncover attention to complex scene features. Read more in a post by @ankosov.bsky.social on a new #psynomAPP paper by @songaeun.bsky.social, @drmack.bsky.social, and @dirkbwalther.bsky.social buff.ly/2So7ndD

Can arts-based interventions improve health? A conceptual and methodological critique Can art improve health and wellbeing? The claim that there is strong evidence that engaging with art ameliorates symptoms of mental and physical disor…

Commentaries for Marcos Nadal's and my recent paper "Can arts-based interventions improve health? A conceptual and methodological critique" have begun to roll in. To keep track of them I am starting this thread.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

There is more to arts and health than neural mechanisms: A Critique of Evidence Dismissal in Arts and Health: Comment on “Can arts-based interventions improve health? A conceptual and methodological c...

Here's a link to freely access my recent comment on debates in arts and health research.

Yes free.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Happy Canada Day, tout le monde! 🇨🇦

Can arts-based interventions improve health? A conceptual and methodological critique Can art improve health and wellbeing? The claim that there is strong evidence that engaging with art ameliorates symptoms of mental and physical disor…

@mskov01.bsky.social and @mnadal.bsky.social recently reviewed arts-based interventions:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

I got the opportunity to write a comment:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

TLDR: ABIs hold some promise but must be tested with the same rigor as other treatments.

Foundations of Computer Vision The print version was published by

Our computer vision textbook is now available for free online here:
visionbook.mit.edu

We are working on adding some interactive components like search and (beta) integration with LLMs.

Hope this is useful and feel free to submit Github issues to help us improve the text!

Researchers harness brain activity to look at how we perceive faces from other racial groups differently Researchers at U of T Scarborough have used brain activity and AI to reveal why we have a tough time recognizing facial details of people from other races.

Excited to share my 1st Bluesky post: 2 studies reveal age biases in other-race face perception using GAN reconstruction and EEG. Congratulations to @moazshoura.bsky.social for this research - in collaboration with @dirkbwalther.bsky.social |
www.eurekalert.org/news-release...

The neural time course of size constancy in natural scenes Accurate real-world size perception relies on size constancy, a mechanism that integrates an object's retinal size with distance information. The neur…

How fast do we extract distance cues from scenes 🛤️🏞️🏜️ and integrate them with retinal size 🧸🐻 to infer real object size? Our new EEG study in Cortex has answers! w/ @dkaiserlab.bsky.social @suryagayet.bsky.social @peelen.bsky.social
Check it out: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

A Room with a View (of Art) Enhancing the built environment with visual art is a major program of the arts in healthcare movement. Does it work?

With the usual caveats of the need for more and better studies. Yet, the evidence does support the use of some kinds of art in clinical spaces. 🧪A Room with a View (of Art) | Psychology Today www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/brai...

Target–distractor (T-D) Configurations and example search displays. A Target–distractor configurations. The black cell indicates targets, while the grey cells indicate the distractors in each condition. The areas in light grey indicate possible jitter zones for individual distractors. The exact position of the distractors can vary in different directions while maintaining the Euclidean distances from the target and configuration rule. B Example displays of search arrays. All three displays are the examples of target-present trials.

What features guide visual search for complex scenes? In her new APP paper, @songaeun.bsky.social uses scenes generated with a GAN to isolate features that guide search: layout, material properties, and lighting.
rdcu.be/elPgO

@drmack.bsky.social
@macklab.bsky.social
@uoftpsychology.bsky.social

Western University is seeking applications for Canada Excellence Research Chairs. Please reach out if you are interested in Theme 2: Neuroscience. Western has extraordinary strengths in cognitive, molecular and systems neuroscience across species (rodents, NHPs, humans) uwo.ca/research/cer...

Spring Gala 2025: Color Flings Fling into Spring with Color

Excited for the Balas Lab to be part of the Plains Art Museum's Spring Gala tonight! This year's theme is "Color Flings" and we'll be there to showcase some of our #VisionScience research (with @dirkbwalther.bsky.social ) investigating the patterns and colors kids think match different emotions.

Marcos Nadal and I are pleased to announce that our new paper, "The sensory valuation account of aesthetic experience", is now out in Nature Reviews Psychology.

www.nature.com/articles/s44...

What do we find beautiful, and how? New conference investigates

It was truly inspiring to see the range of aesthetics research at TASC 2025. Great talks and a tour of the art collection at Simcoe Hall. Read more about it here:
psych.utoronto.ca/news/what-do...

@uoftpsychology.bsky.social
@uc-uoft.bsky.social
@uoftartsci.bsky.social
@uoft.bsky.social

Screenshot of the original tweet announcing our move, with 5K likes and 2M views.

On this day 2y ago we announced our move away from the huge profits that NeuroImage makes for Elsevier.

Things at Imaging Neuroscience have progressed fantastically thanks to the support for this move by the brain imaging community and @mitpress.bsky.social. 565 papers published already!

The Mirror Model of Art sees creativity and aesthetics as mirrors of one another.

Creativity as aesthetics in reverse? How does the Mirror Model of Art hold up when seen through the lens of neuroscience? It doesn't.

New paper with Oshin Vartanian, Delaram Farzanfar and Pablo Tinio in Neuropsychologia.
doi.org/10.1016/j.ne...

@uoftpsychology.bsky.social
@uoft.bsky.social

I have an opening for a graduate student at @carleton.ca (Carleton University) in the Department of Cognitive Science for fall 2025. Project is a multimodal MRI study examining how Hearing Loss affects cognition in older adults - contact me with a CV if you’re interested & have relevant expertise!

Thought-provoking new study from @giacomobignardi.bsky.social et al.

Excited to share on my first post on Bluesky our new paper in NHB examine the innate and developing aspects of the wiring of the visual system. Congratulations to @emilykubota.bsky.social and the baby MRI team on this important work

Absolutely delighted to see that one of my favorite researchers, longtime colleague, and friend, Jody Culham, @culhamari-lab.bsky.social is the recipient of the 2025 Davida Teller Award from the Vision Sciences Society @vssmtg.bsky.social. So well-deserved. 🧪🧠
www.visionsciences.org/2025-davida-...

🧠 Sadly missed the a.m. sessions, but managed to catch @edwardvessel.bsky.social’s lightning talk about his @cuny.edu lab’s great work “Using Personalized Deep Neural Networks to Model the Effect of Category Learning on Internal Representations of Art” #neuroaesthetics #artsky #psychsky #neurosky

A comparison of art engagement in museums and through digital media - Scientific Reports Scientific Reports - A comparison of art engagement in museums and through digital media

When cherished beliefs and intuitions turn out to not be confirmed. Not a lot of difference in the impact of art seen in museums versus on a screen in the lab. Reasons to actually test intuitions. With @kohinoordarda.bsky.social and others. 🧪 #sciart www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Nature exposure induces analgesic effects by acting on nociception-related neural processing - Nature Communications Virtual nature exposure reduces self-reported pain and is associated with decreased brain responses linked to somatosensory and nociceptive processing, providing new insights into the underlying mecha...

"Healthy participants (N = 49) receiving electrical shocks report lower pain when exposed to virtual nature compared to matched urban or indoor control settings".

Cool new imaging study by Steininger et al.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Happy to share our paper on the #AestheticsToolbox around the #QIP-Machine has been published #OpenAccsess in Behavior Research Methods!

It can can be used to easily and transparently compute a wide range of quantitative image properties for digital images 📸
📄 link.springer.com/article/10.3...

Congratulations on the position! And on being here on this platform.