Brianna Hunter

Relating Infant Fixations to Adult Cortical Activation Patterns Using the Natural Scenes Dataset Visual attention develops rapidly across the first postnatal year, from reflexive eye movements driven by low-level stimulus properties to increasingly voluntary eye movements influenced by higher-o.....

Read the full open-access paper here:
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Big thanks to my co-authors and the team of research assistants at the UC Davis Infant Cognition Lab ( @ucdavisicl.bsky.social ).

Feel free to reach out with any questions!

These finding support the conclusion that higher-order visual areas may play an increasing role in guiding visual attention across infancy, reflecting a developmental shift toward a more abstract representation of the environment

We found that younger infants' fixation patterns were significantly related to patterns of activation in low-level regions of adult visual cortex. Older infant's fixations were related to both low- and mid-level regions, similar to the pattern of results of a comparison group of adult subjects

We used representational similarity analysis to compare this adult fMRI data to younger (5-7 mo) and older (10-12 mo) infants' fixation patterns as they viewed a subset of the NSD scenes from the NSD in our lab

Testing this idea empirically has been challenging, given difficulties in measuring visual cortex in infancy. We therefore leveraged the Natural Scenes Dataset (naturalscenesdataset.org), which contains high quantity and high quality fMRI data from adults viewing thousands of scenes

Infants' attention is increasingly guided by higher-level stimulus features, suggesting that the gradual maturation of higher-level visual cortical areas may increasingly support gaze control

YouTube video by Brianna Hunter Relating infant fixations to adult fMRI data using the Natural Scenes Dataset

🚨 New paper out in Developmental Science!! 🚨

Relating Infant Fixations to Adult Cortical Activation Patterns Using the Natural Scenes Dataset
doi.org/10.1111/desc...
by Brianna Hunter, John Kiat, Steve Luck, & Lisa Oakes

View video abstract here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkIV...

Governor: New Mexico to provide universal access to child care Currently, the state’s child care assistance program covers costs for families with incomes at or below 400% of the federal poverty level.

NEW: Starting Nov. 1, New Mexico will become the first state in the nation to offer no-cost child care to every family, regardless of income. This is projected to amount to an average annual family savings of $12,000 per child.

Yes, policy meeting people's needs is possible.

A woman and baby sit together reading a colorful book in a cozy room with shelves behind them; text overlay discusses babies' attention and communication cues. Text on image says, “Babies Pay Attention Longest When Words and Gestures Combined.”

Words and gestures help tune infant attention before they can speak. New UC Davis study finds babies focus longer when object labels ("bear") are paired with spatial words ("here"), and even longer when paired with gestures like pointing. ucdav.is/4lYtXgL

Writing this paper has reminded me how grateful I am to be part of the vibrant infant attention community 👶

Huge thanks to co-authors @shannonmklotz.bsky.social @juliemarkant.bsky.social @lisaoakes.bsky.social + Christian & Erim

We can’t wait to see what the next 25 years of research will reveal!

We hope that future research will increasingly incorporate 1) longitudinal and multisystem approaches that track infants’ attention over time in the context of other developing skills; 2) ecologically valid stimuli and measures; and 3) samples that reflect a broader range of diversity in experience.

We've also learned infant attention is context-dependent. Infants’ focus shifts based on the complexity of the environment and the social or emotional relevance of stimuli.

We now know that infant attention is a complex system. Attention reflects interactions among multiple dynamically changing processes such as memory, perception, and motor development.

For years, attention was described as a progression from bottom-up to top-down control. With use of modern tools, we've learned that attention development isn't quite so simple. A dichotomy between bottom-up vs top-down control cannot fully explain how infants attend.

I wrote a paper with some of my favorite people synthesizing the last 25 years of research on my favorite topic: the development of visual attention during infancy 👶👀

doi.org/10.1016/j.in...

#infantcognition #development #visualperception #visualattention

Resources for Research This section provides brief summaries of selected resources for research that have been published in journals of the Psychonomic Society, typically Behavior Research Methods. These resources consis…

Need to control visual similarity in your experiments? A new open database by Robbins and colleagues @michaelhout.bsky.social @haywardgodwin.bsky.social, published in #psynomBRM, maps similarity among 1,200 objects in 20 categories using MDS—validated & ready to use.

Delighted to share Resources for Researchers webpage has received a 2025 Commendation from @improvingpsych.org! We look forward to continuing this work to help everyone navigate academia and help academia be more welcoming to everyone!
www.plasticityinneurodevelopmentlab.com/resourcesfor...

The Oakes lab had a highly productive last few days!!! Lisa organized and hosted a writing retreat with lots of goal setting, writing time, and check-ins.

This pic was day 1 coffee & goal setting time. I intended to take more pics and document the full retreat but got swept away in writing!!

First time watching a mentee give a talk 🤩🥹

A line graph depicting cumulative grant funding by the National Science Foundation from 1990 to 2025, with funding amounts on the vertical axis and timeline indicators on the horizontal axis. The graph highlights funding trends over the years, with a specific emphasis on Biden’s term and this year (which is the lowest).

Here’s how Trump’s war on science is going. NSF funding is at the lowest level in decades. We’ll lose knowledge, generations of scientists, and US competitiveness.

www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

It’s been SUCH a fulfilling month of research!! Got to talk about my infant scene viewing work at the Bay Area Developmental Symposium and at the Vision Sciences Society meeting. Feeling very grateful to have met so many interesting people and to be a part of these welcoming communities 👁️🧠👶🖼️

NEW PAPER
doi.org/10.1080/1350...

Q: What low-level visual features guide infants’ attention in naturalistic scenes? Intensity? Color? Orientation?

A: Orientation!

Defragmenting psychology - Nature Human Behaviour Psychology is fragmented into the study of a myriad of constructs and measures, most of which are used very rarely. This hinders cumulative knowledge generation. We call on the field to defragment psy...

@malte.the100.ci took the chance & hired me as a postdoc last year and with @ruben.the100.ci @taymalsalti.bsky.social @ianhussey.bsky.social and Lorenz Oehler we wrote a paper on what researchers could do to improve the measurement problems in psychological science. Ruben's figure is a work of art!

Cece’s 2024 scientific year in review

-participated in 12 remote and 5 in-person studies
-helped train 4 RAs in the lab
-featured in 5 talks/manuscripts
-attended 3 departmental seminars
-attended 1 international and 1 local conference

It’s been the BEST year including my daughter in my work! 🧠👁️👶👩‍🔬

The Portable Mentor Cambridge Core - Psychiatry - The Portable Mentor

So excited! A donor has made The Portable Mentor totally and completely FREE for anyone!!!!!! No royalties, no sign up, just download any/all of the 30 chapters of professional development advice!!! HOORAY!!!!! Equal access for everyone!!!!

Check out the ToC!
www.cambridge.org/core/books/p...

Congratulations!!

Can we all take a minute to admire this creativity by Dr. Kathryn Teixeira 😮🤩🫶

Great morning at the UC Davis Scholarship of Teaching and Learning conference! Big congrats to @shannonmklotz.bsky.social and Erim Kızıldere for a people’s choice poster award!

Exciting news: #UCDavis has ranked in the top 5 of public universities for undergraduate #psychology programs in the nation! We’re proud to be leading the way in shaping the next generation of psychologists!

www.usnews.com/best-college...

Ron Mangun at the UC Davis Center for Mind and Brain (CMB) leads cheer for CMB Distinguished Professor and former Director as he wins the UC Davis Prize for Teaching and Scholarly Achievement.

Lisa, I just joined Blue Sky so I could post about Steve as my first Blue Sky post! But you beat me to it. Ok...your privilege, I agree. So I will simply add a photo of me leading a cheer as we announced Steve's prize in the UC Davis Center for Mind and Brain! The crowd went wild....! 💥