“Design can be informed by user preferences, and research can benefit from more ecological validity, from actually being in a space,” says @dirkbwalther.bsky.social @utoronto.ca. “This is potentially game-changing.” 🗼 www.psych.utoronto.ca/news/neurosc...

Hey there #visionscience and #psychscisky friends! I wanted to take a moment to (finally) do a proper promo 🧵 about my new textbook: Practical Vision Science, which is now available from Routledge books. <1/n> www.routledge.com/Practical-Vi...

We are excited to open the re:vision initiative, a community-driven initiative for replicating and generalizing findings in visual neuroscience, based on the LAION-fMRI dataset. re-vision-initiative.org Why this initiative and why would you want to participate? 🧵

For the first time in many years our lab won't attend @vssmtg.bsky.social. We don't feel safe and welcome traveling to the USA at the moment. We are attending CSBBCS and @ecvp.bsky.social instead. We are sorry to miss our friends and colleagues at VSS! Hope to see you in Seattle next year!

Day 1 at @iaea-jena2026.bsky.social has been a blast! 3x talks from our group - facial aesthetics, a new inclusive measure of aesthetic engagement, and harnessing the power of AI to assess qualitative responses. Today - catch @hannahmerseal.bsky.social’s talk in the “Aesthetic Brains” session 🧠🎨

TASC 2026 was a big success! Thanks to invited speakers Kalina Christoff Hadjiilieva @psych.ubc.ca and Gerald Cupchik @utsc.utoronto.ca for their interesting presentations and David Rokeby @utoronto.ca for the Voice Scroll installation. www.linkedin.com/feed/update/... @uoftpsychology.bsky.social

Creativity and aesthetics have long been studied as two independent topics, and yet there is growing recognition of the reciprocal ties that bind them together. A new Research Topic aims to advance a scientific understanding of the interconnections. www.frontiersin.org/research-top... Please repost!

Our brains cling to stability: when scenes slowly change, people still see the original for longer than expected. This AI-image study shows that perception lags behind reality -our minds favor continuity over constant reprocessing. doi.org/10.1037/xhp0... @uoftpsychology.bsky.social

#UofTArtSci psychologist Katy Tam has found that smartphones actually create more boredom. Tam's Life Hacks Research Lab provides evidence-based advice to those struggling with digital distraction. Read more: bit.ly/47qGup6

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!

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...

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...

🚨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...

❗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...

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

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/

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...

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...

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!

“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...

@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

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

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 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

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

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...

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

Hi #canadian researchers - please sign this petition to help ensure funding isn’t cut to tri council agencies (NSERC, SSHRC, and CIHR). We’re looking at potential 15% cuts to ALL federal spending including grants win.newmode.net/canadianasso...

How do our senses contribute to food enjoyment? We answer this question in a new review paper. The paper started as a final project in an undergraduate seminar on neuroaesthetics in 2023. I am so proud of the students and their hard work! cjur.ca/wp-content/u... @uoftpsychology.bsky.social

"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"

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!

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

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...

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! 🇨🇦

@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.

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!

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...

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...