Team

Dr. Ian Charest
Senior Lecturer
Programme Leader
Research: Cognitive neuroscience
Dr. Jasper van den Bosch
Postdoctoral Scientist
Research: Cognitive neuroscience
web-dev, and Methods
Dr. Ludwig Barbaro
Postdoctoral Scientist
Research: Cognitive neuroscience
conscious access
Dr. Sara Assecondi
Postdoctoral Scientist
Research: Cognitive neuroscience
and Methods
Daniel Lindh
PhD Candidate
Research: Cognitive Neuroscience
conscious access
Simon Faghel-Soubeyrand
PhD Candidate
Research: Cognitive Neuroscience
visual features in object recognition
Christina Dimitriadou
PhD Candidate
Research: Cognitive Neuroscience
conscious access
Yifan Xu
PhD Candidate
Research: Cognitive Neuroscience
emotions
Eva Bamps
MSc Candidate
Research: Cognitive Neuroscience
expertise
Lara Oliel
MSc Candidate
Research: Cognitive Neuroscience
conscious access

News

May 2019 - The lab attended VSS 2019.

We presented our latest work via posters, and talks. If you didn't make it to VSS, and would like to check out what we presented, see this GitHub Repo

May 2019 - Lara joins the lab!

The lab is happy to welcome Lara Oliel. Lara is currently completing a Masters degree in Integrative Biology and Physiology at the Sorbonne University Pierre and Marie Curie Campus. She joins the lab to gain experience in cognitive neuroscience and will help with various current projects.

January 2019 - Yifan joins the lab!

The lab is happy to welcome Yifan Xu, who is joining to work on the neurocognitive mechanisms of emotion recognition.

November 2018 - Christina joins the lab!

The lab is happy to welcome Christina Dimitriadou. Christina will work on collecting an important multimodal dataset with several cognitive tasks in EEG, fMRI, and behaviour.

June 2018 - We are looking for a PhD student

The lab is looking for bright, motivated individuals interested in doing a PhD in the context of the START ERC Grant.

June 2018 - The Charest lab attended ASSC22

The lab attended the 22nd internatinal conference of the Association for the Scientific study of consciousness.

This was a great conference, held in the wonderful city of Krakow, Poland. Thanks to the organisers for their efforts.

June 2018 - Ludwig Barbaro joins the lab!

Ludwig Barbaro joins the lab to work on the ERC START grant.

Ludwig is an expert in fMRI, and M/EEG, studies of vision and attention.

May 2018 - Jasper van den Bosch joins the lab!

Jasper van den Bosch joins the lab to work on the ERC START grant.

Jasper is an expert in fMRI, M/EEG, and web-based experiments.

January 2018 - The lab secured an ERC Starting Grant!

START, or "Spatio-Temporal Attention and Representation Tracking" is the latest funded programme of work in the lab. The research programme will be funded by the European Research Council for the next 5 years and will come with many opportunities for postdoctoral and postgraduate researchers to join the lab.

The research will use neuroimaging techniques such as magneto-electroencephalography (M/EEG), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), computational modelling, and psychophysical experiments to better understand conscious access to visual objects in the human brain.

Latest pre-print is out!

Check out our latest pre-print out on bioRxiv. This is a result of a collaboration with Radoslaw Cichy

In this project, we studied visual representations in the brain, combining MEEG, fMRI, and a complex behavioural task, to investigate the behavioural relevance of brain activity patterns in space and time. Neural dynamics of real-world object vision that guide behaviour.

VSS 2017

We recently attented the visual sciences society in St-Pete Florida, where we presented 3 posters.

The posters/talks cover our research in the temporal dynamics of individually unique object representations, categorical differences in the conscious access to visual objects, and three-way fusion of MEEG/fMRI/behaviour in behaviourally relevant object vision, all using Representational Similarity Analyses.

Current projects and collaborations

Individual differences in brain representations

Everyone is unique, and one challenge of brain imaging is to develop new tools to better understand brain function in individual people.

Honoring the unique response of each individual brain, in each cortical patch or column to each particular stimulus.
Early neuroimaging studies have focusses on analyses or regional-mean activation, averaging across voxels within a region of interest (e.g. a face region), across stimuli within a given category (e.g. a individual faces), and across individual subjects (black circle above). The field has begun to honour these distinctions, by analysing patterns of activity within each region, responses to single exemplar images, and the variation across individuals. However, only recently have all these components of progress been combined (red circle) in a single study.

Click here to read our paper.

Our mission is to investigate representational idiosyncrasies using visual objects. On this site, you can discover more about us and our work.

About

The Charest lab at the University of Birmingham uses visual objects as a proxy to study aspects of cognition such as perception, consciousness, memory, and decision making.

Team

News

May 2019 - The lab attended VSS 2019.

We presented our latest work via posters, and talks. If you didn't make it to VSS, and would like to check out what we presented, see this GitHub Repo

May 2019 - Lara joins the lab!

The lab is happy to welcome Lara Oliel. Lara is currently completing a Masters degree in Integrative Biology and Physiology at the Sorbonne University Pierre and Marie Curie Campus. She joins the lab to gain experience in cognitive neuroscience and will help with various current projects.

January 2019 - Yifan joins the lab!

The lab is happy to welcome Yifan Xu, who is joining to work on the neurocognitive mechanisms of emotion recognition.

November 2018 - Christina joins the lab!

The lab is happy to welcome Christina Dimitriadou. Christina will work on collecting an important multimodal dataset with several cognitive tasks in EEG, fMRI, and behaviour.

June 2018 - We are looking for a PhD student

The lab is looking for bright, motivated individuals interested in doing a PhD in the context of the START ERC Grant.

More details on the topic of the position and on how to apply can be found here: PhD position

June 2018 - The Charest lab attended ASSC22

The lab attended the 22nd internatinal conference of the Association for the Scientific study of consciousness.

This was a great conference, held in the wonderful city of Krakow, Poland. Thanks to the organisers for their efforts.

June 2018 - Ludwig Barbaro joins the lab!

Ludwig Barbaro joins the lab to work on the ERC START grant.

Ludwig is an expert in fMRI, and M/EEG, studies of vision and attention.

May 2018 - Jasper van den Bosch joins the lab!

Jasper van den Bosch joins the lab to work on the ERC START grant.

Jasper is an expert in fMRI, M/EEG, and web-based experiments.

January 2018 - The lab secured an ERC Starting Grant!

The research will use neuroimaging techniques such as magneto-electroencephalography (M/EEG), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), computational modelling, and psychophysical experiments to better understand conscious access to visual objects in the human brain.

Latest pre-print is out!

Check out our latest pre-print out on bioRxiv. This is a result of a collaboration with Radoslaw Cichy

In this project, we studied visual representations in the brain, combining MEEG, fMRI, and a complex behavioural task, to investigate the behavioural relevance of brain activity patterns in space and time. Neural dynamics of real-world object vision that guide behaviour.

VSS 2017

We recently attented the visual sciences society in St-Pete Florida, where we presented 3 posters.

Current projects and collaborations

Individual differences in brain representations

Everyone is unique, and one challenge of brain imaging is to develop new tools to better understand brain function in individual people.

Here is the poster that we presented there:
Revealing the temporal dynamics of individually unique object representations

Relating subjective experience to brain function

Conscious access to visual objects

Contact us

About

The Charest lab at the University of Birmingham uses visual objects as a proxy to study aspects of cognition such as perception, consciousness, memory, and decision making.

Team

News

May 2019 - The lab attended VSS 2019.

We presented our latest work via posters, and talks. If you didn't make it to VSS, and would like to check out what we presented, see this GitHub Repo

May 2019 - Lara joins the lab!

The lab is happy to welcome Lara Oliel. Lara is currently completing a Masters degree in Integrative Biology and Physiology at the Sorbonne University Pierre and Marie Curie Campus. She joins the lab to gain experience in cognitive neuroscience and will help with various current projects.

January 2019 - Yifan joins the lab!

The lab is happy to welcome Yifan Xu, who is joining to work on the neurocognitive mechanisms of emotion recognition.

November 2018 - Christina joins the lab!

The lab is happy to welcome Christina Dimitriadou. Christina will work on collecting an important multimodal dataset with several cognitive tasks in EEG, fMRI, and behaviour.

June 2018 - We are looking for a PhD student

The lab is looking for bright, motivated individuals interested in doing a PhD in the context of the START ERC Grant.

More details on the topic of the position and on how to apply can be found here: PhD position

June 2018 - The Charest lab attended ASSC22

The lab attended the 22nd internatinal conference of the Association for the Scientific study of consciousness.

This was a great conference, held in the wonderful city of Krakow, Poland. Thanks to the organisers for their efforts.

June 2018 - Ludwig Barbaro joins the lab!

Ludwig Barbaro joins the lab to work on the ERC START grant.

Ludwig is an expert in fMRI, and M/EEG, studies of vision and attention.

May 2018 - Jasper van den Bosch joins the lab!

Jasper van den Bosch joins the lab to work on the ERC START grant.

Jasper is an expert in fMRI, M/EEG, and web-based experiments.

January 2018 - The lab secured an ERC Starting Grant!

The research will use neuroimaging techniques such as magneto-electroencephalography (M/EEG), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), computational modelling, and psychophysical experiments to better understand conscious access to visual objects in the human brain.

Latest pre-print is out!

Check out our latest pre-print out on bioRxiv. This is a result of a collaboration with Radoslaw Cichy

In this project, we studied visual representations in the brain, combining MEEG, fMRI, and a complex behavioural task, to investigate the behavioural relevance of brain activity patterns in space and time. Neural dynamics of real-world object vision that guide behaviour.

VSS 2017

We recently attented the visual sciences society in St-Pete Florida, where we presented 3 posters.

Current projects and collaborations

Individual differences in brain representations

Everyone is unique, and one challenge of brain imaging is to develop new tools to better understand brain function in individual people.

Here is the poster that we presented there: Revealing the temporal dynamics of individually unique object representations

Relating subjective experience to brain function

Conscious access to visual objects

Contact us

Here is the poster that we presented there:
Revealing the temporal dynamics of individually unique object representations