will take place on Tuesday, February 10th, 2026 from 17:00 to 18:00 hours in the CBBM Building, Ground Floor, Seminar Room Levi-Montalcini.
Host: Prof. Ulrike Krämer
Institut für Medizinische Psychologie
Abstract: Whenever we look at an object, our perception of it results from the integration of the corresponding retinal signals with our knowledge, expectations, and current objectives. The overarching aim of my Knowledge‑Based Vision Lab is to unravel how this process is realized in the human brain. Specifically, by combining fMRI, EEG, and psychophysical experiments with advanced multivariate analyses, we directly test whether expectation and attention (1) increase the efficiency of information encoding in the visual cortex, (2) alter the time course of image information encoding, and (3) enhance the inter‑areal flow of visual information. In this presentation, I will present recent EEG results from our lab demonstrating temporally distinct information processing for expected and unexpected aspects of visual images, as well as EEG data on the dependencies between expectation‑ and attention‑related effects on visual information encoding. Moreover, I will introduce an advanced psychophysical paradigm we have recently developed, the results of which will be used in an upcoming fMRI study testing whether expectation increases information‑processing efficiency. Finally, I will present preliminary results from our combined fMRI and eye‑tracking study, which we aim to complement with an Optically Pumped Magnetometer (OPM) study here at the CBBM.
