Damian Koevoet

1/ Why are we so easily distracted? 🧠 In our new EEG preprint w/ Henry Jones, @monicarosenb.bsky.social and @edvogel.bsky.social we show that distractibility is associated w/ reduced neural connectivity — and can be predicted from EEG with ~80% accuracy using machine learning.

Very excited to announce my first paper is out in @currentbiology.bsky.social! Using EEG, we identify an item-based measure of storage in working memory that generalizes across auditory and visual items.

authors.elsevier.com/a/1ljFF3QW8S...

#PsychSciSky #neuroskyence #workingmemory

Dynamic competition between bottom-up saliency and top-down goals in early visual cortex Task-irrelevant yet salient stimuli can elicit automatic, bottom-up attentional capture and compete with top-down, goal-directed processes for neural representation. However, the temporal dynamics und...

🧠 Excited to share that our new preprint is out!🧠
In this work, we investigate the dynamic competition between bottom-up saliency and top-down goals in the early visual cortex using rapid invisible frequency tagging (RIFT).

📄 Check it out on bioRxiv: www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...

Sensory eye dominance varies over the horizontal axis of the visual field: left eye dominance for the right visual field; right eye dominance for the left visual field.

Surely you know about eye dominance. You probably don’t know it’s not a unitary phenomenon: in this paper I show that sensory eye dominance varies over the visual field. In the Discussion I propose an explanation for why this variation might exist. Curious? Read it here: doi.org/10.1167/jov....

Had a blast at last week's symposium! Inspiring to hear all the talks about EEG and attention.

I presented on the neural correlates of saccade preparation and covert spatial attention. Check out the preprint here: doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Last week's symposium titled "Advances in the Encephalographic Study of Attention" was a great success! Held in the KNAW building in Amsterdam and sponsored by the NWO, many of (Europe's) leading attention researchers assembled to discuss the latest advances in attention research using M/EEG.

In this new preprint, in review @elife.bsky.social, we show what processing steps make up the reaction time using single trial #EEG modelling in a contrast #decision task.

In this 🧵 I'm telling the story behind it as I think it is quite interesting and I can't write it like this in the paper...

Thrilled to share that I successfully defended my PhD dissertation on Monday June 16th!

The dissertation is available here: doi.org/10.33540/2960

New paper out at Journal of Memory and Language! We knew that individual differences in working memory predict source memory, but did it predict simple item recognition memory (that relied on less attention resources than source memory)? Our answer is: YES! (with @edvogel.bsky.social ) 1/5

Now published in Attention, Perception & Psychophysics @psychonomicsociety.bsky.social

Open Access link: doi.org/10.3758/s134...

Thanks to the support of the Dutch Research Council (NWO) and @knaw-nl.bsky.social , we're thrilled to announce the international symposium "Advances in the Encephalographic study of Attention"! 🧠🔍

📅 Date: June 25th & 26th
📍 Location: Trippenhuis, Amsterdam

Sensory sensitivity

We study how people react to sensory input like lights and sounds. You can help by completing a short online questionnaire. You can also sign up for an optional 3-hour lab session in Utrecht (€12/ hour) involving EEG and hearing tests.
Take the survey here: tinyurl.com/457z89ta

a soccer player with the number 10 on his jersey is being shown a red card ALT: a soccer player with the number 10 on his jersey is being shown a red card

Long overdue! Didn't promote this one amid twitter/X chaos. But nearing the end of my PhD, I want to do this project justice and post it here:

Is visual working memory used differently when errors are penalized?

Out already 1+ year ago in JEP:LMC: research-portal.uu.nl/ws/files/258...
🧵 (1/3)

Good morning #VSS2025, if you care for a chat about the role of attention in binding object features (during perceptual encoding and memory maintenance), drop by my poster now (8:30-12:30) in the pavilion (422). Hope to see you there!

@vssmtg.bsky.social
presentations today!

R2, 15:00
@chrispaffen.bsky.social:
Functional processing asymmetries between nasal and temporal hemifields during interocular conflict

R1, 17:15
@dkoevoet.bsky.social:
Sharper Spatially-Tuned Neural Activity in Preparatory Overt than in Covert Attention

Also don’t forget @chrispaffen.bsky.social’s talk tomorrow in the binocular vision session!

Attending @vssmtg.bsky.social? Come check out my talk on EEG decoding of preparatory overt and covert attention!

Tomorrow in the Attention: Neural Mechanisms session at 17:15. You can check out the preprint in the meantime:

As always, thanks to all people involved in the project: @cstrauch.bsky.social, Marnix Naber, @stigchel.bsky.social. @attentionlab.bsky.social

We previously showed that affordable eye movements are preferred over costly ones. What happens when salience comes into play?

In our new paper, we show that even when salience attracts gaze, costs remain a driver of saccade selection.

OA paper here:
doi.org/10.3758/s134...

A big thanks to all those involved in the project: Vicky Voet, @henryjones.bsky.social, Edward Awh @cstrauch.bsky.social
@stigchel.bsky.social!

Preparing overt eye movements and directing covert attention are neurally coupled. Yet, this coupling breaks down at the single-cell level. What about populations of neurons?

We show: EEG decoding dissociates preparatory overt from covert attention at the population level:
doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Thrilled to share that, as of May 1st, I have started as a postdoc at The University of Manchester!

I will investigate looked-but-failed-to-see (LBFTS) errors in visual search, under the expert guidance of Johan Hulleman and Jeremy Wolfe. Watch this space!

A move you can afford Where a person will look next can be predicted based on how much it costs the brain to move the eyes in that direction.

Where a person will look next can be predicted based on how much it costs the brain to move the eyes in that direction.

If you're interested in this article, here's the link: trebuchet.public.springernature.app/get_content/... Thanks to my supervisors @suryagayet.bsky.social @chrispaffen.bsky.social and @Stefan Van der Stigchel for their support!🎉

@andresahakian.bsky.social Do you know?

Thanks so much to @cstrauch.bsky.social and all other co-authors: Laura Van Zantwijk, @sebastiaanmathot.bsky.social, Marnix Naber and Stefan Van der Stigchel. @attentionlab.bsky.social. Really happy how this turned out! Stay tuned for follow-up experiments!

In our latest paper @elife.bsky.social we show that we choose to move our eyes based on effort minimization. Put simply, we prefer affordable over more costly eye movements.

eLife's digest:
elifesciences.org/digests/9776...

The paper:
elifesciences.org/articles/97760

#VisionScience

A move you can afford Where a person will look next can be predicted based on how much it costs the brain to move the eyes in that direction.

We show that eye-movements are selected based on effort minimization - finally final in @elife.bsky.social
eLife's digest:
elifesciences.org/digests/9776...
& the 'convincing & important' paper:
elifesciences.org/articles/97760

I consider this my coolest ever project!

#VisionScience #Neuroscience

Heat map of gaze locations overlaid on top of a feature-rich collage image. There is a seascape with a kitesurfer, mermaid, turtle, and more.

New preprint!

We present two very large eye tracking datasets of museum visitors (4-81 y.o.!) who freeviewed (n=1248) or searched for a +/x (n=2827) in a single feature-rich image.

We invite you to (re)use the dataset and provide suggestions for future versions 📋

osf.io/preprints/os...

<em>Psychophysiology</em> | SPR Journal | Wiley Online Library Previous studies have shown that the pupillary light response (PLR) can physiologically index covert attention, but only with highly simplistic stimuli. With a newly introduced technique that models ....

Out in Psychophysiology (OA):

Typically, pupillometry struggles with complex stimuli. We introduced a method to study covert attention allocation in complex video stimuli -
effects of top-down attention, bottom-up attention, and pseudoneglect could all be recovered.

doi.org/10.1111/psyp.70036