Very excited to start my lab in NY this August as an Assistant Professor in Computational Cognitive Neuroscience & Simons Empire Faculty Fellow at the University at Albany – SUNY. My lab will focus on understanding the neural mechanisms underlying real-world visual cognition (perception & memory).

New paper! We found basic scene selectivity arises across the scene network early in infancy (i.e., by ~3.5 months old), prior to independent navigation experience www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

The cortical scene processing network emerges in infancy, prior to independent navigation experience | PNAS

Sighted people rely on vision to recognize and navigate the local environment. By adulthood, human cortex contains at least three regions that resp...

pnas.org

Job ad (2/2): data scientist in the AFNI group (SSCC, NIMH, NIH, USA). FMRI/MRI methods dev, software design, statistics, analysis, data viz, quality control, machine learning and more! Please see: discuss.afni.nimh.nih.gov/t/job-ad-dat... I am happy to chat at OHBM+Brainhack. Please share!

Job ad (1/2): Postdoc fellowship in the AFNI group (SSCC, NIMH, NIH, USA). FMRI/MRI methods dev, software design, statistics, analysis, data viz, quality control, machine learning and more! Please see: discuss.afni.nimh.nih.gov/t/job-ad-pos... I am happy to chat at OHBM+Brainhack. Please share!

What do we look for when searching for objects in our daily-life environments? Very happy that I can now share this review, together with @suryagayet.bsky.social , @predictivebrain.bsky.social and @peelen.bsky.social🥳 A brief thread below!

Trends in Cognitive Sciences@cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Online Now: Attention in the wild: balancing flexibility and stability

Alex Martin talked about his "eclectic" career spanning over 4 decades, including 31 years in the Laboratory of Cognition (NIH), with some reflections on what makes a successful scientific career: "the right place at the right time", "it's good to be first", "controversy is helpful"

Happening Tuesday and Wednesday. Links for the online videocast can be found here: bit.ly/4bYlbxw

Chris Baker@cibaker.bsky.social · 4mo ago

The Laboratory of Brain and Cognition at NIH is hosting a two-day symposium on 'Foundations and Frontiers in Cognitive Neuroscience' in honor of Dr. Alex Martin, to be held at NIH (with online videocast) on April 7th-8th, 2026. Register to attend online or in-person at: bit.ly/4bYlbxw

New paper out in @cp-neuron.bsky.social 🎉 What determines contextual modulation in V1? Why does the visual surround sometimes facilitate and sometimes suppress a neuron's response to its preferred stimulus?

The Laboratory of Brain and Cognition at NIH is hosting a two-day symposium on 'Foundations and Frontiers in Cognitive Neuroscience' in honor of Dr. Alex Martin, to be held at NIH (with online videocast) on April 7th-8th, 2026. Register to attend online or in-person at: bit.ly/4bYlbxw

Why is the #cerebellum (known for coordinating motor functions) also engaged in #cognition? @diedrichsenjorn.bsky.social & @actlab.bsky.social investigate the problems that have made it so difficult to answer this question and outline strategies to make progress. 🧪 #NeuroSky

How does the cerebellum contribute to cognitive functions?

The role of the cerebellum in motor functions is well understood. But why is the same circuitry engaged in functions such as working memory, language, and social cognition? This Unsolved Mystery…

plos.io

We believe visual neuroscience is undergoing a paradigm shift — and the Beyond Binding exchange in @TrendsCogSci makes it visible. Five papers, excellent critics, and a discussion that sharpened and nuanced our argument. Thread 👇

**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...

Why do children struggle to recognise objects in cluttered scenes more than adults? Our new paper looks at the development of visual acuity and crowding across childhood, and the way the visual system fine tunes our ability to see detail: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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!

Category selectivity vs. behavioral relevance in visual cortex? 👁️🧠 @levandyck.bsky.social and I really enjoyed diving into this piece and appreciated the authors’ thoughtful response. We're curious to see how the field moves forward from here! ➡️

J. Brendan Ritchie@jbrendanritchie.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Our reply to 11 commentaries on our article ("Rethinking category-selectivity in human visual cortex") is out in Cognitive Neuroscience! Thanks to @susanwardle.bsky.social @maryamvaziri.bsky.social Dwight Kravitz @cibaker.bsky.social and all who contributed! 1/x www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Is the concept of “category-selectivity” holding the field back in understanding high-level visual cortex? Detailed discussion in our published perspective piece and accompanying commentaries:

J. Brendan Ritchie@jbrendanritchie.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Our reply to 11 commentaries on our article ("Rethinking category-selectivity in human visual cortex") is out in Cognitive Neuroscience! Thanks to @susanwardle.bsky.social @maryamvaziri.bsky.social Dwight Kravitz @cibaker.bsky.social and all who contributed! 1/x www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

This head is spinning continuously, but we see it rotating back and forth... ...presumably because of our strong prior expectation that faces are convex. This is a very nice example of the Hollow-Face illusion promoted by Richard Gregory: www.richardgregory.org/experiments/

❤️ Bluesky fMRI people! 3-day #fMRI course live online Jan 7-9, 2026. #SPM, #ICA, GLM, connectivity, mediation, MRI physics, #DataScience with @vcalhoun.bsky.social and Kent Kiehl. We love talking methods & connecting with colleagues! Come join us! Register here: sites.google.com/dartmouth.ed...

fMRI Course

Instructors

sites.google.com

Now out in #JNeurosci -- we found changes in medial parietal cortex after manual exploration of everyday real-world objects doi.org/10.1523/JNEU... with Beth Rispoli, Vinai Roopchansingh & @cibaker.bsky.social

Announcing the next AFNI Bootcamp: Sep 23-25, 2025. Free, open & virtual. This "Part 1" will focus on basic visualization and single subject FMRI processing, including discussions of alignment, templates, regression, ROIs and quality control. Details & registration: afni.nimh.nih.gov/bootcamp

If you’d like to write a commentary to accompany our new article arguing for a rethinking of how we approach understanding visual function in occipitotemporal cortex, now is your chance!

J. Brendan Ritchie@jbrendanritchie.bsky.social · 11mo ago

Our target discussion article out in Cognitive Neuroscience! It will be followed by peer commentary and our responses. If you would like to write a commentary, please reach out to the journal! 1/18 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... @cibaker.bsky.social @susanwardle.bsky.social

Now out in @natneuro.nature.com What happens to the brain’s body map when a body-part is removed? Scanning patients before and up to 5 yrs after arm amputation, we discovered the brain’s body map is strikingly preserved despite amputation www.nature.com/articles/s41593-025-02037-7 🧵1/18

High-frequency transcranial random noise stimulation (hf-tRNS) targeted at motion processing region hMT+ does not improve visual motion discrimination. Failed #replication in #registeredreport @ryanruhde.bsky.social Mica Carroll @cibaker.bsky.social #trns #nibs #NIMH doi.org/10.1016/j.co... 1/6

In these tumultuous times, still happy to report a scientific achievement: our preprint on affordance perception was just published in PNAS! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... Using behavior, fMRI and deep network analyses, we report two key findings. To recapitulate (preprint 🧵lost on other place):

Representation of locomotive action affordances in human behavior, brains, and deep neural networks | PNAS

To decide how to move around the world, we must determine which locomotive actions (e.g., walking, swimming, or climbing) are afforded by the immed...

pnas.org

The result of a large (42 authors!) collaboration: "Go Figure: Transparency in neuroscience images preserves context and clarifies interpretation" arxiv.org/abs/2504.07824 TL;DR: The FMRI world can (and should) improve results interpretation and reproducibility *today*, via transparent thresholding.

Two more days until our workshop 🥳@cosynemeeting.bsky.social #Cosyne2025 Object-centric neural representations across species 🐒🐁🕷️🐝🖥️ Check out our homepage: toliaslab.org/workshop/cos... Excellent speakers include @dyamins.bsky.social @hansopdebeeck.bsky.social & many more 🙌

I'll be giving a talk at the foundation model workshop #Cosyne2025 tomorrow: neurofm-workshop.github.io In response to @thetransmitter.bsky.social article by @tyrellturing.bsky.social & Eva Dyer I'll be talking about: How do "foundation"/AI models help us (experimenters) study the brain?

COSYNE 2025 Workshop - Building a foundation model for the brain

Join us to explore neuro-foundation models. March 31-April 1, 2025 in Mont Tremblant, Canada.

neurofm-workshop.github.io

Why do we not remember being a baby? One idea is that the hippocampus, which is essential for episodic memory in adults, is too immature to form individual memories in infancy. We tested this using awake infant fMRI, new in @science.org #ScienceResearch www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Hippocampal encoding of memories in human infants

Humans lack memories for specific events from the first few years of life. We investigated the mechanistic basis of this infantile amnesia by scanning the brains of awake infants with functional magne...

science.org

I wrote a commentary on a very nice paper that just appeared in @brain1878.bsky.social by @selmalugtmeijer.bsky.social, Sobolewska, de Haan & @neurosteven.bsky.social. Spoiler: It's about modularity in mid-level vision. 🤓 Original paper: doi.org/10.1093/brai... Commentary: doi.org/10.1093/brai...

How modular are modules in visual cortex?

This scientific commentary refers to ‘Visual feature processing in a large stroke cohort: evidence against modular organization’ by Lugtmeijer, Sobolewska

doi.org

The dynamic version is even more disturbing...

Gavin Buckingham @drgbuckingham.bsky.social · last yr.

Simple and beautiful impossible image, by Niko22966