Utrecht University Phone: (+31) 30 253 3651 / (+31) 6 410 480 28 www.stefanvanderstigchel.nl
Utrecht University How is the continuous influx of visual information on our retinae transformed into a comprehensible visual world that is useful to behavior, and that ultimately leads to a conscious visual experience? To address this question I combine neuroimaging, computational, physiological, and behavioral methods. Keywords describing my research interests include "visual perception", "visual working memory", "consciousness", and "attentional selection". Utrecht University Visual working memory processes have almost exclusively been studied under conditions where the to-be remembered stimuli were absent. In most cases however, visual stimuli stay accessibly to perception. On top of that, recent electro-physiological findings suggest that WM processes are also engaged for stimuli that are still in view. My goal is to use EEG and MVPA to investigate what information is maintained in WM when stimuli are perceptually accessible and test which factors can influence these representations. Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam My research projects all involve cognitive processing and eye movements. Currently I am connected to the Attention Lab as a PhD student. Utrecht University Uncovering, at any given time, how many items are present in someone’s (visual) working memory is a complex task. In my PhD, I will investigate whether computational cognitive models can give insight into working memory usage based on gaze behaviour – and how experimental manipulations affect this usage of working memory. Additionally, I will investigate whether various patient populations use different working memory strategies as compared to healthy controls, by seeing whether machine learning models can dissociate between the two groups based on gaze behaviour and memory usage. Utrecht University Hi there! I am Andre. My interest goes out to human consciousness. Especially how our brain tricks us into experiencing a rich and vivid visual world, while the input from the eyes is mostly blurry and we are pretty much blind to anything we do not attend. Questions like “How do we represent the visual world around us?” or “What visual information do we store from one moment to the next?” keep me up at night (figuratively). During my PhD I will conduct behavioral experiments in virtual environments to better understand how visual working memory is used in our daily lives. Utrecht University How do patients with acquired brain injury employ their visual working memory to efficiently perceive and use visual information? Do classical neuropsychological tasks tell the whole story? During my PhD I will try to find out whether eye movement behavior can give insights in underlying (working) memory deficits after acquired brain injury, and whether this relates to findings on tasks used in standard neuropsychological assessment. Utrecht University Traditionally, the pupil has been thought to exclusively play a role in low-level visual processing. However, accumulating evidence has shown that the pupil also reflects cognitive processing such as visual working memory (VWM). In my research I focus on investigating the trade-off between internal VWM storage and external sampling using pupillometry. Pupillometry allows for tracking VWM content, which may help to identify individual strategies during natural VWM tasks. Utrecht University I am interested in visual awareness and relevant visual processes including statistical learning, visual attention, and visual working memory. During my Ph.D., I will conduct a series of experiments to investigate how statistical learning influences human perception at the unconscious level. My toolbox includes Matlab/R, eye tracking, and EEG. Utrecht University Hi, I am a researcher passionate about learning how humans experience the virtual world, why it sometimes feels as real as the physical world and how we can use that feeling for practical purposes. In my PhD I focus on the concept of presence, which is defined as "the feeling of being in a virtual environment". My work revolves around finding ways in which we can objectively measure presence as well as understanding which factors influence the experience of presence. I work with virtual and augmented reality and eye tracking while using various statistical analysis approaches. Utrecht University Little is known about bridge/lock operators’ eye movements during actual operation. As an external PhD candidate I aim to better understand eye gaze behaviour by analysing operators’ eye tracking recordings. From a practical perspective, careful studies of eye gaze can for instance inform what kind of visual information is required during their task execution. This could in turn inform about the (re)design of their professional workspace or work process. From a theoretical perspective, the research can give insights into eye gaze behaviour in professional settings.Stefan Van der Stigchel - Principal Investigator
Experimental Psychology
Heidelberglaan 1
Room H.030
3584 CS Utrecht
The Netherlands
EmailSurya Gayet - Assistant Professor
Experimental Psychology
Langeveld Building
Room H0.32
EmailSamson Chota - Assistant Professor
Experimental Psychology
Langeveld Building
Room H0.32
EmailJessica Heeman - PhD Candidate
Cognitive Psychology
Van der Boechorststraat 1
1081 BT Amsterdam
Room 18-84
Phone: (+31) 20 598 8913
EmailAlex Hoogerbrugge - PhD Candidate
Experimental Psychology
Heidelberglaan 1
Room H0.15
EmailAndre Sahakian - PhD Candidate
Experimental Psychology
Heidelberglaan 1
Room H0.15
EmailSanne Böing - PhD Candidate
Experimental Psychology
Heidelberglaan 1
Room H0.15
EmailDamian Koevoet - PhD Candidate
Experimental Psychology
Heidelberglaan 1
Room H0.15
EmailLuzi Xu - PhD Candidate
Experimental Psychology
Heidelberglaan 1
Room H0.07
EmailJeffrey Harris - PhD Candidate
Experimental Psychology
EmailRutger Stuut - PhD Candidate
Experimental Psychology
Email
Former PhD students Other Lab alumni
Paul Zerr
Yun Ding
Jasper Fabius
Rudmer Menger
Martijn Schut
Erik Oudman
Joris Elshout