Pascal Mamassian

We will address this through an integrated behavioural, computational, and neurophysiological approach, focusing on how endogenous perceptual traits interact with the external factors.

PhD and postdoctoral positions linked to this project will be advertised in the coming months.
Stay tuned!

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Pleased to share that a collaboration project between David Pascucci (UNIL/CHUV) and I has been selected for funding.

Our project asks a central question:
Why do individuals differ in how their perceptual judgments are shaped by temporal context?

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L'écriture de mon manuel de psychoacoustique #openaccess avance bien : chapitre 1 (méthodologie de la psychophysique) terminé, chapitre 2 (physiologie du système auditif) terminé pour ce qui concerne le système auditif périphérique, j'attaque le chapitre 4 !
leovarnet.github.io/psychoac-man...

🚨Friends, we’re happy to share that our book is available for pre-order! 🎉
We aimed to cover all the foundations of the topic in an accessible manner for a large audience.
It could help set up a bachelor-level curriculum on the topic.
Pre-orders are very key for the fate of books: shorturl.at/Dxbif

Learn more about the origins of Neurotree and how you can use it to explore trends in neuroscience.

This is such a bizarre illusion - the helmet leads to an expectation of a face inside and all I saw was a blurred out face until I realized what's really happening...

The Ponizsa illusion - Kanizsa triangle produces Ponzo illusion, but oddly it inverts apparent depth: the longer line looks closer! Also has an inversion effect like we studied in Altan et al 2025 Proc Roy Soc (doi.org/10.1098/rspb...) but it's also in reverse! 🤔
#visionscience #psychscisky

Excellent chimeric face image showing off a left visual field bias for face processing - this image will tend to look more like John Travolta to observers, but the next one (see following post in this thread)... <1/2>

A static image of the Mainz-Linez illusion: 4 vertical wiggly lines, in the middle of each a red disk. A small black cross in the center.

A new addition to my “Visual Phenomena and Optical Illusions” collection: “Mainz-Linez”. Here's the live demonstration and explanation of the somewhat mysterious title: michaelbach.de/ot/mot-Mainz.... Enjoy!

A new, Short and Sweet open-access paper on how briefly hiding the hand impedes goal-directed arm movements. Briefly is really brief: we find a decrease in performance in goal-directed movements due to just a few ms without vision of the hand (target remains visible). doi.org/10.1177/0301...

PhD track in cognitive science | PSL Faire un don

[PhD track in Cognitive Science at Département d'Études Cognitives, ENS-PSL]

Applications are now open for the PSL PhD Track 2026–2027 in Cognitive Science!
This 5-year integrated program is aimed at talented students eager to tackle the scientific challenges of the future and to start shaping 1/2

Les sens de la musique

Heureux de venir parler des bases neuroscientifiques et psychologiques de la synesthésie (cette confusion des sens), le mercredi 15 octobre à 10h30, dans le cadre de l’exposition Kandinksy à la Philharmonie de Paris

philharmoniedeparis.fr/fr/activite/...

How about in this case?
Surprisingly, most people *predominantly see 180° motion*, while 360° motion is hardly, if ever, perceived – even though the rings move in the same way as above!
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The Temporal Scaffolding of Sensory Organization How a developing nervous system discovers meaning in complex sensory inputs has typically been examined separately for each sensory modality. Even as studies have uncovered modality-specific strategie...

"This integration supports the conclusion that time may be the fundamental dimension along which the brain organizes its sensorium..."

Fantastic review by Pawan Sinha and colleagues (@lukasvogelsang.bsky.social @marinv.bsky.social)

doi.org/10.1146/annu...

Responses to combinations of motion clouds were well explained by a simple summation mechanism of the individual components.

Finally, a subset of neurons exhibited responses that could distinguish different speeds.

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Graphical abstract of the main results of the study by Thomas Schaffhauser

We found that motion features were encoded in a temporally ordered sequence: orientation and spatial frequency emerged within 120 ms after stimulus onset, while temporal frequency and direction followed at later latencies.

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Encoding and combining naturalistic motion cues in the ferret higher visual cortex Natural visual scenes contain rich flows of pattern motion that vary not only in orientation but also in spatial sizes and temporal rhythms. To properly interpret the motion, the brain must extract in...

Delighted to share this work led by Thomas Schaffhauser on the processing of rich natural-like motion stimuli (“motion clouds”) in the visual cortex of the ferret:

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

This work was done with Yves Boubenec at the @lsp-ens.bsky.social.

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An array of 9 purple discs on a blue background. Figure from Hinnerk Schulz-Hildebrandt.

A nice shift in perceived colour between central and peripheral vision. The fixated disc looks purple while the others look blue.

The effect presumably comes from the absence of S-cones in the fovea.

From Hinnerk Schulz-Hildebrandt:
arxiv.org/pdf/2509.115...

Brightness induced by motion
Instruction: Without blinking, follow the green ball :)

live version with shader code:
www.shadertoy.com/view/tc2fDD

#illusion #perception

A beautiful painting from Georges de la Tour where the coat’s grey paint appears blue because of the dominant yellow colour in the canvas.

It took another two centuries for Eugène Chevreul to describe the laws of simultaneous contrast, used later by Vincent van Gogh, Sonia Delaunay, and others.

Neuroscience: large-scale evidence for perceptual entrainment to auditory rhythms Communications Psychology - A large multi-lab replication study confirms that rhythmic sounds can entrain perceptual performance, while revealing substantial inter-individual variability.

My Research Highlight on an important study assessing large-scale evidence for perceptual entrainment to auditory rhythms is now out,
emphasizing the importance of replications, sample sizes and variability across individuals and labs @natureportfolio.nature.com

rdcu.be/eFODC

#PressRelease 🗞️ The 2025 CNRS Gold Medal has been awarded to Stéphane Mallat, recognised the world over for his research on mathematics applied to signal processing and artificial intelligence.

👉 cnrs.fr/en/press/bet...

#CNRStalents 🏅

The diamond appears to move.

In this short letter we explain why binding problems occur in the brain and why deep neural networks need to cope with them. We respond to Scholte and de Haan (TICS 2025), who claimed the opposite.

lnkd.in/euNaS6eu

Indeed, Zebra noise shares some characteristics of the Motion Clouds, but for the purpose of strongly driving visual neurons, they decided to binarize their stimulus, whereas we preserve the full luminance range.

Thanks Andrey!

Motion Clouds are one step closer to natural movies, while still allowing the experimenter to have full control on its generation.

Forget random-dot motion and drifting gratings, embrace "Motion Clouds", the motion stimulus of the 21st century!

by:
Andrew Meso
Jonathan Vacher, @jon-v.bsky.social
Nikos Gekas
Pascal Mamassian, @mamassian.bsky.social
Laurent Perrinet, @laurentperrinet.bsky.social
Guillaume Masson

Congratulations, very impressive collaborative work!

The published results are already interesting, but the open-source data will undoubtedly be very useful in the future.

2026 - Bournemouth, UK
2027 - Padua, Italy
2028 - Paris, France

A Mucha-style painting showing the Eiffel Tower at sunset with ECVP 50 2028 Paris written

As #ECVP2025 wraps up, I’m delighted that #ECVP2028 in Paris was accepted at the Business Meeting! ECVP will meet again before but the Parisian organizing committee is already planning an unforgettable 50th anniversary!