My CV can be found here.    

Research topic

My research focuses on the role of natural image statistics in visual scene perception. Compared to most stimuli used 'in the laboratory', natural scenes are inherently complex. Yet we can assume that our visual system has evolved to deal with just these stimuli, not isolated objects. Therefore, it is important to understand how the real-world scenes are represented in the brain.

Interestingly, despite their complexity, natural images show regularities: for example, the distribution of contrast in an image is highly structured, and can be described using simple statistics. It turns out that the brain may be very sensitive to these 'hidden' properties of the visual world. For example, we found recently that differences in early evoked neural activity to natural stimuli can in large part be explained by differences in simple statistics of low-level information. We hypothesize that the brain may use these statistical regularities to rapidly identify and classify images, i.e. to capture the 'visual gist' of an image. 

I want to find out to what extent the brain indeed exploits such properties of the visual world in processes such as scene categorization, object identification and other forms of visual cognition.

Biographical info

I graduated from the Cognitive Neuroscience research master at the UvA in 2009, after I obtained a bachelor degree Beta-Gamma, major Psychobiology. My graduation project was conducted at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge, UK, under supervision of dr. Morgan Barense. 

In my graduation project, I investigated the role of medial temporal lobe structures in visual processing of complex objects, combining a fMRI and patient study. While I was writing my thesis I was also involved in a research project on colour vision and fMRI at the Heegerlab, NYU, New York.

Next to studying, I worked as a research assistant for dr. Steven Scholte, for whom I performed fMRI scanning, and for dr. Birte Forstmann, for whom I conducted fMRI and EEG studies. I was also involved in setting up master student association 'Cognito'.

Currently I'm finishing my PhD project, which is supervised by dr. Steven Scholte, dr. Sennay Ghebreab and prof. Victor Lamme.

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