Dr M.V. Peelen (Marius)

My research focuses on the question of how the brain makes sense of our natural daily-life environments; how it so rapidly creates - from the vast amounts of information received by the sensory systems - sparse conceptual-level representations of objects that are currently relevant to the individual. To address this question, we investigate the nature of object and scene representations in visual cortex, the role of experience in shaping these representations, as well as top-down (attention, memory, expectation) and crossmodal influences on visual processing. We use behavioral and neuroimaging measures to study these topics, with a strong fMRI focus. I was recently awarded an ERC Consolidator grant for a project that aims to characterize the neural mechanisms underlying the efficiency of naturalistic human vision.

• Perception, Action and Decision-making

• Visual Cognitive Neuroscience