Centre for Integrative Neuroscience in the Vision and Cognition lab of Prof. Dr. Andreas Bartels

My research uses functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the neural underpinnings of visual processing and the role of predictive coding. I am specifically interested in understanding how top-down information (i.e. expectation) is fed back from higher brain areas for the integration with bottom-up sensory processing in earlier visual areas. During the experiments, participants view high-level visual stimuli that trigger top-down processing (i.e. prediction) while I record their brain activity. I use multi-voxel pattern analysis (MVPA) to classify patterns of blood-oxygen-level dependent (BOLD) activity in the visual cortex. My research aims to uncover the neural mechanisms in the human brain that make it possible to see the world around us and to construct the continuous and unified perception of our environment.