Planning on running a RIFT study? In a new manuscript, we put together the RIFT know-how accumulated over the years by multiple labs (@lindadrijvers.bsky.social, @schota.bsky.social, @eelkespaak.bsky.social, with Cecília Hustá and others). Preprint: osf.io/preprints/ps...

Filled with a bunch of extra analyses, this is now accepted in The Journal of Neuroscience @sfn.org! You can have a sneak peak here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Spatial attention and working memory are popularly thought to be tightly coupled. Yet, distinct neural activity tracks attentional breadth and WM load. In a new paper @jocn.bsky.social, we show that pupil size independently tracks breadth and load. doi.org/10.1162/JOCN...

Very happy to see this preprint out! The amazing @danwang7.bsky.social was on fire sharing this work at #ECVP2025, gathering loads of attention, and here you can find the whole thing! Using RIFT we reveal how the competition between top-down goals and bottom-up saliency unfolds within visual cortex.

I'll show some (I think) cool stuff about how we can measure the phenomenology of synesthesia in a physiological way at #ECVP - Color II, atrium maximum, 9:15, Thursday. say hi and show your colleagues that you're one of the dedicated ones by getting up early on the last day!

🧠 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/...

And now without bluesky making the background black...

#ECVP2025 starts with a fully packed room! I'll show data, demonstrating that synesthetic perception is perceptual, automatic, and effortless. Join my talk (Thursday, early morning.., Color II) to learn how the qualia of synesthesia can be inferred from pupil size. Join and (or) say hi!

Excited to give a talk at #ECVP2025 (Tuesday morning, Attention II) on how spatially biased attention during VWM does not boost excitability the same way it does when attending the external world, using Rapid Invisible Frequency Tagging (RIFT). @attentionlab.bsky.social @ecvp.bsky.social

Excited to share that I’ll be presenting my poster at #ECVP2025 on August 26th (afternoon session)! 🧠✨ Our work focused on dynamic competition between bottom-up saliency and top-down goals in early visual cortex by using Rapid Invisible Frequency Tagging @attentionlab.bsky.social @ecvp.bsky.social

Excited to present at #ECVP2025 - Monday afternoon, Learning & Memory - about how anticipating relevant visual events prepares visual processing for efficient memory-guided visual selection! 🧠🥳 @attentionlab.bsky.social @ecvp.bsky.social Preprint for more details: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Gaze heatmaps (are popular especially for eye-tracking beginners and in many applied domains. How many participants should be tested? Depends of course, but our guidelines help navigating this in an informed way. Out now in BRM (free) doi.org/10.3758/s134... @psychonomicsociety.bsky.social

Thrilled to share that I successfully defended my PhD dissertation on Monday June 16th! The dissertation is available here: doi.org/10.33540/2960

Now published in Attention, Perception & Psychophysics @psychonomicsociety.bsky.social Open Access link: doi.org/10.3758/s134...

@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

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...

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...

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

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...

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

Congrats to Luzi @luzixu.bsky.social! We're very proud of you! 🎊

Presaccadic attention facilitates visual continuity across eye movements. However, recent work may suggest that presaccadic attention doesn't shift upward. What's going on? Our paper shows that presaccadic attention moves up- and downward using the pupil light response. doi.org/10.1111/psyp.70047

New popscience piece on why pupil size changes are so cool. psyche.co/ideas/the-pu... Included: an assignment that lets you measure pupil size. In my classes, this replicates Hess & Polt's 1964 effort finding without an eyetracker. Feel free to use it! #VisionScience #neuroscience #psychology 🧪

In conclusion, observers can flexibly de-prioritize and re-prioritize VWM contents based on current task demands, allowing observers to exert control over the extent to which VWM contents influence concurrent visual processing.

🚨My first paper with Samson Chota, Luzi Xu , Stefan Van der Stigchel and @suryagayet.bsky.social accepted in Consciousness and Cognition(www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...) We asked whether the impact of VWM content on early visual processing depends on the priority state of the memory items.

As always, excellent work by Damian et al.!

Happy to have published my first paper during my PhD🥳 Huge thanks to @cstrauch.bsky.social, Leendert Van Maanen, Stefan Van der Stigchel!

New paper accepted in JEP-General (preprint: osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/uvzdh) with @suryagayet.bsky.social & Nathan van der Stoep. We show that observers use both hearing & vision for localizing static objects, but rely on a single modality to report & predict the location of moving objects. 1/9

This Friday (29-11) the Helmholtz Institute are hosting another public lecture. All are welcome to attend! The lecture starts at 16.00 in Ruppert Paars, with drinks afterwards. Abigail Marsh: "Altruism, care, and the extended self" helmholtzschool.nl/2024/07/09/h...

Want to keep track of AttentionLab's members? We have our own starter pack! Follow all or make a selection, up to you! Will update this list whenever more lab members join Bluesky 🙂 go.bsky.app/4yHiToK