Dirk Bernhardt-Walther

10 PhD positions at JLU Giessen in the new Research Training Group "PIMON"! We will explore how humans perceive and interact with materials and objects in natural environments.
More information on the project, the PIs, and how to apply here:
www.uni-giessen.de/de/ueber-uns...
Please share!

The tuned cortex: Convergent expertise-related structural and functional remodeling across the adult lifespan Neuroplasticity is a defining property of the brain. Structural and functional brain changes arise soon after learning and are particularly evident following years of practice that underpin expert per...

New paper from our team led by the incredibly talented Dr. Erik Wing (with Jordan Chad, Geneva Mariotti and @drjenryan.bsky.social). www.jneurosci.org/content/earl...

**Postdoc position in human category learning**

@thecharleywu.bsky.social, Frank Jäkel and I are seeking a postdoctoral fellow to lead a joint project on human category learning at the Centre for Cognitive Science @tuda.bsky.social.

www.career.tu-darmstadt.de/tu-darmstadt...

A 2D Gabor-wavelet baseline model out-performs a 3D surface model in scene-responsive cortex Author summary To gain a more complete picture of human visual processing, it is critical to understand the precise format of representations of naturalistic visual scenes. Recent work has approached ...

Excited that this work with @serences.bsky.social and @timbrady.bsky.social is now out! Our Gabor-wavelet model better predicted voxel responses in scene regions than 3D models. Does this mean that scene areas aren’t “for” processing 3D scene structure? NO, we argue. 1/
dx.plos.org/10.1371/jour...

Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Cognitive/Computational Neuroscience If you are a current Barnard College employee, please use the internal career site to apply for this position. Job: Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Cognitive/Computational Neuroscience The Barnard Visua...

🚨Job alert! I'm recruiting a postdoc! If you want to study the time course of task-driven visual perception, please reach out! #neuroskyence #VisionScience #CogSci barnard.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Facult...

Population receptive field size in scene-selective visual cortex is related to the anterior-posterior organization. Spatial frequency preference is NOT related to pRF size!

New results by Charlotte Leferink and @damianoc.bsky.social:
doi.org/10.1162/IMAG...

@uoftpsychology.bsky.social @utoronto.ca

New paper in Imaging Neuroscience by Charlotte A. Leferink, Claudia Damiano, and Dirk B. Walther:

Population receptive field size does not correspond to spatial frequency processing in scene-selective cortex

doi.org/10.1162/IMAG...

❕Job opening alert❕We are looking for a new post-bac Research Assistant to join the Visual Attention Lab!
See the link for job description and how to apply

search.bwh.harvard.edu/new/staff_fi...

a woman stands in front of a crowd on a stage with a lot of lights ALT: a woman stands in front of a crowd on a stage with a lot of lights

❗New Paper❗Is children's attention more like a spotlight that darts across time, or one that diffuses across many things at once? How might children's immature attention help their learning? Our Dev Sci Paper has answers! 🧵🎯

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41549519/

I have a PhD opening for my #VIDI BrainShorts project 📽️🧠🤖! Are you or do you know an ambitious, recent (or almost) MSc graduate with a background in NeuroAI and interest in large-scale data collection and video perception? Check out our vacancy! (deadline Feb 15).
werkenbij.uva.nl/en/vacancies...

(a) Mean cross-validated R2 for each model, averaged across participants and shown separately for each visual area (V1–hV4) and across all ROIs combined. Error bars indicate ± 1 SEM. All pairwise differences were significant except between the Contour-Based and Line Drawing–Steerable Pyramid Models in hV4. (b) Mean R2 by population receptive field eccentricity. Eccentricities of voxels are binned up to 4.2 visual angle which was the extent of the image from the central fixation mark. (c) Left: Visual ROI on an inflated surface map in fsaverage space. Right: R2 difference surface map in fsaverage space. R2 from the Photo-Steerable Pyramid Model was subtracted from the Contour Model. Positive values indicate bigger R2 values from Contour compared to Photo-Steerable Pyramid Model.

What determines the perception of orientations in visual cortex, sharp contours or oriented spatial frequencies?

It's the contours, the building blocks for shape. Brilliant paper by Seohee Han out in Scientific Reports:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

@uoftpsychology.bsky.social

I accidentally included the wrong tag. It should be:
@sachinxr.bsky.social ! Sorry!

Wonderful article about our recent paper in @pnasnexus.org! Thanks, @sachapfeiffer.bsky.social and @mickbonner.bsky.social!

@yikai-tang.bsky.social @uoftpsychology.bsky.social @artsci.utoronto.ca @utoronto.ca

🚨 Last publication alert of 2025! Why is scene understanding easier and faster for some scenes than for others? Here, we explore whether scenes with too much information slow visual processing. 1/

Empirical aesthetics of bridges Bridges are works of public infrastructure designed to perform a practical function. They are unique among works of engineering in that they also have a significant aesthetic dimension. At their best,...

Bridges can anchor communities as landmarks and even tourist destinations, blend into their environment unnoticed, or they can be eyesores. What determines the aesthetic quality of bridges?

Mei Yang, @damianoc.bsky.social, Paul Gauvreau, and I explore this question here:
doi.org/10.1371/jour...

Lindsay Lab - Postdoc Position Artificial neural networks applied to psychology, neuroscience, and climate change

Spread the word: I'm looking to hire a postdoc to explore the concept of attention (as studied in psych/neuro, not the transformer mechanism) in large Vision-Language Models. More details here: lindsay-lab.github.io/2025/12/08/p...
#MLSky #neurojobs #compneuro

Dimensionality reduction may be the wrong approach to understanding neural representations. Our new paper shows that across human visual cortex, dimensionality is unbounded and scales with dataset size—we show this across nearly four orders of magnitude. journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...

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...

Registration for TASC 2026 is now open!
sites.google.com/view/tasc2026/
forms.gle/YFENqo6rSd5F...

Keynote speakers:
Kalina Christoff Hadjiilieva and Gerald Cupchik

Register by January 16th!

As an arts critic, I give in to my subconscious. But what’s really happening in my mind? Arts critic Joshua Chong tests the AGO's Art Rate Monitor and speaks with psychologist Dirk Bernhardt-Walther about how art impacts the brain.

“People don’t just want to enjoy the superficial qualities of an artwork: the lines and the colours. They want to have a deeper connection with it," says @dirkbwalther.bsky.social. www.thestar.com/entertainmen...

As an arts critic, I give in to my subconscious. But what’s really happening in my mind? Arts critic Joshua Chong tests the AGO's Art Rate Monitor and speaks with psychologist Dirk Bernhardt-Walther about how art impacts the brain.

@thestar.com has an interesting article today about aesthetics and beauty, for which @joshuachong.bsky.social interviewed my about the psychology of aesthetics:
www.thestar.com/entertainmen...

(archive version: archive.ph/1yTOe)

@uoftpsychology.bsky.social

Beauty linked with metabolic costs of perceiving images Humans may find images that take less energy to process aesthetically pleasing, suggesting that our attraction to beauty is at least partially an energy conservation strategy. 

Here is a wonderfully written press release about the paper:

www.eurekalert.org/news-release...

Conceptual Roadmap of the present study. To examine the relationship between the metabolic costs of visual processing and aesthetic pleasure, we used both computational and physiological measures to quantify metabolic costs during visual processing: 1. Model-derived estimates of metabolic costs based on the activation of a deep neural network; 2. Metabolic activity of human brains, specifically in the visual processing areas. We found that both measures were inversely related to aesthetic pleasure.

Energy efficiency drives evolution, and humans may have evolved pleasure-based signals to optimize actions. Does this extend to aesthetic pleasure?

Yes!

Strong evidence in silico and humans, out in PNAS Nexus:
tinyurl.com/3kbu8xw4

With Yikai Tang and Wil Cunningham.
@uoftpsychology.bsky.social

Memorability of visual stimuli and the role of processing efficiency Nature Reviews Psychology - Certain items are better remembered than others across individuals, a property known as memorability. In this Review, Bainbridge and colleagues detail memorability...

What makes visual stimuli memorable? Wilma Bainbridge, @keisukefukuda.bsky.social, Lore Goetschalckx, and I investigate the role of processing fluency for memorability in a new review paper in Nature Reviews Psychology. Check it out!

rdcu.be/eSyjz

Memorability of visual stimuli and the role of processing efficiency Nature Reviews Psychology - Certain items are better remembered than others across individuals, a property known as memorability. In this Review, Bainbridge and colleagues detail memorability...

Memorability of visual stimuli and the role of processing efficiency

Very cool review on image memorability (hint: priority coding is key) by Wilma Bainbridge, @dirkbwalther.bsky.social @keisukefukuda.bsky.social, Lore Goetschalckx

rdcu.be/eSyjz

Congratulations!

Very pleased to share that our article on preferences for complexity at different levels of order is now out in PACA! 🎉Not all types of complexity were appreciated similarly, but all were liked better under high order!

🔗 doi.org/10.1037/aca0...
📄 osf.io/preprints/ps...
@gestaltrevision.bsky.social

Logo of the CSBBCS, CIAN and York U

Exciting update: The Canadian Society for Brain, Behaviour and Cognitive Science (CSBBCS) will host its 2026 Meeting at York University,(June 1–3, 2026), followed by the Cognition and Action Satellite Workshop (June 4–5).
@jdcrawford.bsky.social @yorku-cian.bsky.social
www.yorku.ca/research/cia...

‘Who’s Afraid of AI?’: U of T event asks what kind of AI future we want The rapid advance of artificial intelligence has so far been met with a mix of optimism and fear – but relatively little insight into what this potentially smarter-than-us technology actually means fo...

Article with more details about the conference:
share.google/KmcyXl7Y3k0j...

SPRINT hits new heights breaking down barriers in science The Summer Psychology Research Initiative (SPRINT)—an outreach and access program established five years ago by graduate students in the Department of Psychology—celebrated its biggest year yet this s...

Out of a record 662 applications from students at 178 different high schools in Ontario, 60 young learners were invited to participate in the free two-week program @utoronto.ca designed to advance equity, diversity, inclusivity & accessibility in psychology & post-secondary education.

Who's afraid of AI?

toronto2025.ai