Dirk Bernhardt-Walther
Professor of Psychology University of Toronto, scene perception by humans and machines, visual aesthetics.
bwlab.org
- Reposted by Dirk Bernhardt-Walther❗New Paper❗Is children's attention more like a spotlight that darts across time, or one that diffuses across many things at once? How might children's immature attention help their learning? Our Dev Sci Paper has answers! 🧵🎯 pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41549519/
- Reposted by Dirk Bernhardt-WaltherI have a PhD opening for my #VIDI BrainShorts project 📽️🧠🤖! Are you or do you know an ambitious, recent (or almost) MSc graduate with a background in NeuroAI and interest in large-scale data collection and video perception? Check out our vacancy! (deadline Feb 15). werkenbij.uva.nl/en/vacancies...
- What determines the perception of orientations in visual cortex, sharp contours or oriented spatial frequencies? It's the contours, the building blocks for shape. Brilliant paper by Seohee Han out in Scientific Reports: www.nature.com/articles/s41... @uoftpsychology.bsky.social
- Wonderful article about our recent paper in @pnasnexus.org! Thanks, @sachapfeiffer.bsky.social and @mickbonner.bsky.social! @yikai-tang.bsky.social @uoftpsychology.bsky.social @artsci.utoronto.ca @utoronto.ca
- Why do we find some scenes more aesthetic than others? For my first in @sciencenews.bsky.social, I wrote about a new study that suggests that our aesthetic preferences could have evolved as cognitive shortcuts. 🧠🧪 www.sciencenews.org/article/brai...
- I accidentally included the wrong tag. It should be: @sachinxr.bsky.social ! Sorry!
- Reposted by Dirk Bernhardt-Walther🚨 Last publication alert of 2025! Why is scene understanding easier and faster for some scenes than for others? Here, we explore whether scenes with too much information slow visual processing. 1/
- Bridges can anchor communities as landmarks and even tourist destinations, blend into their environment unnoticed, or they can be eyesores. What determines the aesthetic quality of bridges? Mei Yang, @damianoc.bsky.social, Paul Gauvreau, and I explore this question here: doi.org/10.1371/jour...
- Reposted by Dirk Bernhardt-WaltherSpread the word: I'm looking to hire a postdoc to explore the concept of attention (as studied in psych/neuro, not the transformer mechanism) in large Vision-Language Models. More details here: lindsay-lab.github.io/2025/12/08/p... #MLSky #neurojobs #compneuro
- Reposted by Dirk Bernhardt-WaltherDimensionality reduction may be the wrong approach to understanding neural representations. Our new paper shows that across human visual cortex, dimensionality is unbounded and scales with dataset size—we show this across nearly four orders of magnitude. journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...
- Registration for TASC 2026 is now open! sites.google.com/view/tasc2026/ forms.gle/YFENqo6rSd5F... Keynote speakers: Kalina Christoff Hadjiilieva and Gerald Cupchik Register by January 16th!
- Reposted by Dirk Bernhardt-Walther“People don’t just want to enjoy the superficial qualities of an artwork: the lines and the colours. They want to have a deeper connection with it," says @dirkbwalther.bsky.social. www.thestar.com/entertainmen...
- @thestar.com has an interesting article today about aesthetics and beauty, for which @joshuachong.bsky.social interviewed my about the psychology of aesthetics: www.thestar.com/entertainmen... (archive version: archive.ph/1yTOe) @uoftpsychology.bsky.social
- Energy efficiency drives evolution, and humans may have evolved pleasure-based signals to optimize actions. Does this extend to aesthetic pleasure? Yes! Strong evidence in silico and humans, out in PNAS Nexus: tinyurl.com/3kbu8xw4 With Yikai Tang and Wil Cunningham. @uoftpsychology.bsky.social
- Here is a wonderfully written press release about the paper: www.eurekalert.org/news-release...
- What makes visual stimuli memorable? Wilma Bainbridge, @keisukefukuda.bsky.social, Lore Goetschalckx, and I investigate the role of processing fluency for memorability in a new review paper in Nature Reviews Psychology. Check it out! rdcu.be/eSyjz
- Reposted by Dirk Bernhardt-WaltherMemorability of visual stimuli and the role of processing efficiency Very cool review on image memorability (hint: priority coding is key) by Wilma Bainbridge, @dirkbwalther.bsky.social @keisukefukuda.bsky.social, Lore Goetschalckx rdcu.be/eSyjz
- Reposted by Dirk Bernhardt-WaltherVery pleased to share that our article on preferences for complexity at different levels of order is now out in PACA! 🎉Not all types of complexity were appreciated similarly, but all were liked better under high order! 🔗 doi.org/10.1037/aca0... 📄 osf.io/preprints/ps... @gestaltrevision.bsky.social
- Reposted by Dirk Bernhardt-WaltherExciting update: The Canadian Society for Brain, Behaviour and Cognitive Science (CSBBCS) will host its 2026 Meeting at York University,(June 1–3, 2026), followed by the Cognition and Action Satellite Workshop (June 4–5). @jdcrawford.bsky.social @yorku-cian.bsky.social www.yorku.ca/research/cia...
- Who's afraid of AI? toronto2025.ai
- Article with more details about the conference: share.google/KmcyXl7Y3k0j...
- Reposted by Dirk Bernhardt-WaltherOut of a record 662 applications from students at 178 different high schools in Ontario, 60 young learners were invited to participate in the free two-week program @utoronto.ca designed to advance equity, diversity, inclusivity & accessibility in psychology & post-secondary education.
- Reposted by Dirk Bernhardt-WaltherHi #canadian researchers - please sign this petition to help ensure funding isn’t cut to tri council agencies (NSERC, SSHRC, and CIHR). We’re looking at potential 15% cuts to ALL federal spending including grants win.newmode.net/canadianasso...
- How do our senses contribute to food enjoyment? We answer this question in a new review paper. The paper started as a final project in an undergraduate seminar on neuroaesthetics in 2023. I am so proud of the students and their hard work! cjur.ca/wp-content/u... @uoftpsychology.bsky.social
- Reposted by Dirk Bernhardt-Walther"style is more than just an optional add-on for visual objects: it is part of visual processing and has consequences for how we perceive and respond to what we see"
- Reposted by Dirk Bernhardt-WaltherHow well do traditional attention theories generalize to complex scene features? @songaeun.bsky.social, @drmack.bsky.social & @dirkbwalther.bsky.social used AI-generated stimuli to find out. 👀 www.psych.utoronto.ca/news/using-g...
- The Cognitive Science Research Community (CoRC) at the University of Toronto has several exciting events in store this year: www.uc.utoronto.ca/cognitive-sc... Join us for science and good company!
- Announcing the Toronto Aesthetics Sciences and Creativity Conference 2026! TASC 2026 brings together researchers, scholars, and students from across the Greater Toronto Area with interest in empirical aesthetics, psychology of art, and the study of creativity. sites.google.com/view/tasc2026/
- Reposted by Dirk Bernhardt-WaltherA new study uses AI-generated stimuli to uncover attention to complex scene features. Read more in a post by @ankosov.bsky.social on a new #psynomAPP paper by @songaeun.bsky.social, @drmack.bsky.social, and @dirkbwalther.bsky.social buff.ly/2So7ndD
- Reposted by Dirk Bernhardt-Walther[This post could not be retrieved]
- Reposted by Dirk Bernhardt-WaltherCommentaries for Marcos Nadal's and my recent paper "Can arts-based interventions improve health? A conceptual and methodological critique" have begun to roll in. To keep track of them I am starting this thread. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
- Reposted by Dirk Bernhardt-WaltherHere's a link to freely access my recent comment on debates in arts and health research. Yes free. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
- Happy Canada Day, tout le monde! 🇨🇦
- @mskov01.bsky.social and @mnadal.bsky.social recently reviewed arts-based interventions: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... I got the opportunity to write a comment: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... TLDR: ABIs hold some promise but must be tested with the same rigor as other treatments.
- Reposted by Dirk Bernhardt-WaltherOur computer vision textbook is now available for free online here: visionbook.mit.edu We are working on adding some interactive components like search and (beta) integration with LLMs. Hope this is useful and feel free to submit Github issues to help us improve the text!
- Reposted by Dirk Bernhardt-WaltherExcited to share my 1st Bluesky post: 2 studies reveal age biases in other-race face perception using GAN reconstruction and EEG. Congratulations to @moazshoura.bsky.social for this research - in collaboration with @dirkbwalther.bsky.social | www.eurekalert.org/news-release...
- Reposted by Dirk Bernhardt-WaltherHow fast do we extract distance cues from scenes 🛤️🏞️🏜️ and integrate them with retinal size 🧸🐻 to infer real object size? Our new EEG study in Cortex has answers! w/ @dkaiserlab.bsky.social @suryagayet.bsky.social @peelen.bsky.social Check it out: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
- Reposted by Dirk Bernhardt-WaltherWith the usual caveats of the need for more and better studies. Yet, the evidence does support the use of some kinds of art in clinical spaces. 🧪A Room with a View (of Art) | Psychology Today www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/brai...
- What features guide visual search for complex scenes? In her new APP paper, @songaeun.bsky.social uses scenes generated with a GAN to isolate features that guide search: layout, material properties, and lighting. rdcu.be/elPgO @drmack.bsky.social @macklab.bsky.social @uoftpsychology.bsky.social
- Reposted by Dirk Bernhardt-WaltherWestern University is seeking applications for Canada Excellence Research Chairs. Please reach out if you are interested in Theme 2: Neuroscience. Western has extraordinary strengths in cognitive, molecular and systems neuroscience across species (rodents, NHPs, humans) uwo.ca/research/cer...
- Reposted by Dirk Bernhardt-WaltherExcited for the Balas Lab to be part of the Plains Art Museum's Spring Gala tonight! This year's theme is "Color Flings" and we'll be there to showcase some of our #VisionScience research (with @dirkbwalther.bsky.social ) investigating the patterns and colors kids think match different emotions.
- Reposted by Dirk Bernhardt-WaltherMarcos Nadal and I are pleased to announce that our new paper, "The sensory valuation account of aesthetic experience", is now out in Nature Reviews Psychology. www.nature.com/articles/s44...
- It was truly inspiring to see the range of aesthetics research at TASC 2025. Great talks and a tour of the art collection at Simcoe Hall. Read more about it here: psych.utoronto.ca/news/what-do... @uoftpsychology.bsky.social @uc-uoft.bsky.social @uoftartsci.bsky.social @uoft.bsky.social
- Reposted by Dirk Bernhardt-WaltherOn this day 2y ago we announced our move away from the huge profits that NeuroImage makes for Elsevier. Things at Imaging Neuroscience have progressed fantastically thanks to the support for this move by the brain imaging community and @mitpress.bsky.social. 565 papers published already!
- Creativity as aesthetics in reverse? How does the Mirror Model of Art hold up when seen through the lens of neuroscience? It doesn't. New paper with Oshin Vartanian, Delaram Farzanfar and Pablo Tinio in Neuropsychologia. doi.org/10.1016/j.ne... @uoftpsychology.bsky.social @uoft.bsky.social
- Reposted by Dirk Bernhardt-WaltherI have an opening for a graduate student at @carleton.ca (Carleton University) in the Department of Cognitive Science for fall 2025. Project is a multimodal MRI study examining how Hearing Loss affects cognition in older adults - contact me with a CV if you’re interested & have relevant expertise!
- Reposted by Dirk Bernhardt-WaltherThought-provoking new study from @giacomobignardi.bsky.social et al.
- “What an odd thing“ wrote Oliver Sacks “to see an entire species playing with listening to meaningless tonal patterns, preoccupied for much of their time by what they call ‘music’...“. Our new paper, led by ace student @giacomobignardi.bsky.social, unpacks this puzzle from a genetic perspective. 🧪
- Reposted by Dirk Bernhardt-WaltherExcited to share on my first post on Bluesky our new paper in NHB examine the innate and developing aspects of the wiring of the visual system. Congratulations to @emilykubota.bsky.social and the baby MRI team on this important work
- The latest paper from my PhD is now out in Nature Human Behavior! rdcu.be/edRwQ
- Reposted by Dirk Bernhardt-WaltherAbsolutely delighted to see that one of my favorite researchers, longtime colleague, and friend, Jody Culham, @culhamari-lab.bsky.social is the recipient of the 2025 Davida Teller Award from the Vision Sciences Society @vssmtg.bsky.social. So well-deserved. 🧪🧠 www.visionsciences.org/2025-davida-...
- Reposted by Dirk Bernhardt-Walther🧠 Sadly missed the a.m. sessions, but managed to catch @edwardvessel.bsky.social’s lightning talk about his @cuny.edu lab’s great work “Using Personalized Deep Neural Networks to Model the Effect of Category Learning on Internal Representations of Art” #neuroaesthetics #artsky #psychsky #neurosky
- Reposted by Dirk Bernhardt-WaltherWhen cherished beliefs and intuitions turn out to not be confirmed. Not a lot of difference in the impact of art seen in museums versus on a screen in the lab. Reasons to actually test intuitions. With @kohinoordarda.bsky.social and others. 🧪 #sciart www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- Reposted by Dirk Bernhardt-Walther"Healthy participants (N = 49) receiving electrical shocks report lower pain when exposed to virtual nature compared to matched urban or indoor control settings". Cool new imaging study by Steininger et al. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- Reposted by Dirk Bernhardt-WaltherHappy to share our paper on the #AestheticsToolbox around the #QIP-Machine has been published #OpenAccsess in Behavior Research Methods! It can can be used to easily and transparently compute a wide range of quantitative image properties for digital images 📸 📄 link.springer.com/article/10.3...
- I invite you to attend the Toronto Aesthetics Sciences Conference (TASC) at @uc-uoft.bsky.social on April 8th, 2025. Registration is free but required. sites.google.com/view/tasc2025/ Please join us for a day of nerding out over empirical aesthetics! @uoftpsychology.bsky.social @uoft.bsky.social
- Register for TASC 2025 by this Friday, February 28th! sites.google.com/view/tasc2025/
- Reposted by Dirk Bernhardt-WaltherMy favorite remote conference is coming back this year, and we are looking for a postdoc to join the team of organizers! If you LOVE working memory research and its wonderful community, join us!
- The Working Memory Symposium will return in 2025 (Tentative date: July 8-11)! We are now seeking a new post-doc organizer to join our organizing team. To apply, fill out the google form linked on our home page (www.wmsymposium.org) by March 16!
- Reposted by Dirk Bernhardt-WaltherQueer neuroscientists: Be gay, love dendritic spines
- Reposted by Dirk Bernhardt-WaltherI'm hiring a full-time research assistant to start this Summer! The lab studies perception and cognition from infancy to adulthood using neuroimaging, behavioral, and computational approaches For more details about the lab and the position, see: vlad-lab.com/join #psychjobs #neurojobs
- Reposted by Dirk Bernhardt-WaltherVSAC 2025: Call for abstracts and symposia! Submit your proposal at 2025.vsac.eu/submission We look forward to hearing about your work! #art #science #visualartofscience #conference #vsac #visualart #artscience #illusionart
- Reposted by Dirk Bernhardt-WaltherI feel this is converging evidence for the recent wonderful work from @dirkbwalther.bsky.social on the beauty/pleasure of photographs (osf.io/preprints/ps...). 🥳 Stay tuned for our preprint!
- Reposted by Dirk Bernhardt-WaltherYay! See you at this year's @vssmtg.bsky.social VSS! Excited to bring together my undergrad advisors (Yan Bao, Ernst Pöppel) and Zane (Weizhen Xie) in one project. With a fun set of abstract paintings by contemporary artist LaoZhu, we found that lower activation in DNNs predict higher beauty.
- Reposted by Dirk Bernhardt-Walther
Bitch that's a WILD increase in biking trips year over year here in Toronto (per @graphicmatt.com, highly recommend to subscribe to his City Hall Watch newsletter!!!! cityhallwatcher.com) - Energy efficiency drives evolution, and humans may have evolved pleasure-based signals to optimize actions. Does this extend to aesthetic pleasure? Yes! We find strong evidence in silico and human observers! osf.io/preprints/ps... With Yikai Tang and Wil Cunningham. @uoftpsychology.bsky.social
- Reposted by Dirk Bernhardt-WaltherProf. Oshin Vartanian, PhD student Delaram Farzanfar & Prof. @dirkbwalther.bsky.social use brain imaging data & computational measures of curvature to unravel one of the most robust findings in empirical aesthetics www.psych.utoronto.ca/news/why-do-...
- Reposted by Dirk Bernhardt-WaltherMy dept (UCL Experimental Psychology) has 12 funded PhD studentships for next academic year (Sept 2025 start)! These are only for UK citizens or with right to remain. I would be happy to support applications from students who would like to join my lab. See: www.ucl.ac.uk/pals/researc...
- People like round contours better than angular contours. Where and how is curvature represented in the brain? With indoor architecture we found a neural dissociation between subjective curvature and computational curvature. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- How does neurodiversity affect aesthetic processing? I explored this questions with students from a seminar class on Neuroaesthics. Our insights just got published in Neuroscience and Behavioral Reviews. authors.elsevier.com/a/1jlNnY3M3i... I'm proud of the great work by the students!
- Perceptual Organization in Computer and Biological Vision - Research Topics in Frontiers with 14 articles spanning Computer Science, Psychology, and Neuroscience: t.ly/q6jn3 What started with a symposium VSS in 2022, is now complete just in time for #VSS2024!
- Reposted by Dirk Bernhardt-Walther🎉 My first first-author paper is now published in PBR! @drmack.bsky.social and l used novel computational modeling & behavioral approaches to show how selective pattern differentiation and integration support learning and generalization of category exceptions! link.springer.com/article/10.3...
- What is the role of curvature in aesthetic appeal? A star-studded symposium at #IAEA2024 explores this question in detail Find us at @IAEAPalma2024 on Thursday, May 9th, at 9 am, bright and early!
- We are looking for candidates for a unique postdoc opportunity to work on the role of perceptual grouping in human and computer vision with Sven Dickinson, Kaleem Siddiqi, Zygmunt Pizlo and me. www.bwlab.org/postdoc-posi... Please repost.
- We are looking for a new Lead Technologist for the Toronto Neuroimaging Facility (ToNI). Join us for the highly interesting, dynamic research and stay for the great benefits offered by the University of Toronto. To apply: jobs.utoronto.ca/job/Toronto-... Please repost.
- Another excellent piece of work by the talented @songaeun.bsky.social using generative adversarial networks to tease out distortions of perceptual space near category boundaries!
- Brief category learning distorts the perceptual space of complex scenes! Our new paper is now in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review: link.springer.com/article/10.3.... @drmack.bsky.social @dirkbwalther.bsky.social
- Reposted by Dirk Bernhardt-WaltherBrief category learning distorts the perceptual space of complex scenes! Our new paper is now in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review: link.springer.com/article/10.3.... @drmack.bsky.social @dirkbwalther.bsky.social
- Another excellent piece of work by the @songaeun.bsky.social using generative adversarial networks to tease out distortions of perceptual space near category boundaries!
- Brief category learning distorts the perceptual space of complex scenes! Our new paper is now in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review: link.springer.com/article/10.3.... @drmack.bsky.social @dirkbwalther.bsky.social
- Reposted by Dirk Bernhardt-WaltherUsing deep neural networks to disentangle visual and semantic information in human perception and memory www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- "The Natural Scene Network" - a comprehensive overview of scene processing in the human brain by Diane Beck and me just got published in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia Neuroscience. It's been fun working on this chapter with my former postdoc advisor! doi.org/10.1093/acre...
- Nice feature on the UofT Arts and Science website about Dela Farzanfar's and my recent Psych Science article on manipulating aesthetic liking of images: www.artsci.utoronto.ca/news/researc... Link to the paper: doi.org/10.3389/fcom...
- Oops, wrong paper. Here is the correct one: doi.org/10.1177/0956...
- Shape-Based Measures Improve Scene Categorization by DNNs. Morteza Rezanejad's magnus opus finally out in IEEE PAMI. doi.org/10.1109/TPAM... A super productive and fun collaboration with John Wilder, Allan D. Jepson, Sven Dickinson, and Kaleem Siddiqi. Read on for a quick summary.
- 4/4 When we augment the input into the CNN with shape-based symmetry scores, categorization improves significantly. Shape features help with categorization but are not computed by the CNN. Is this discrepancy due to CNN architecture or the training regime? We don’t know yet.
- Reposted by Dirk Bernhardt-WaltherOur review on scene perception is now freely available in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Neuroscience! doi.org/10.1093/acre... We discuss object-, space- and affordance-based scene representations and behavioral, fMRI and M/EEG evidence for their presence in the human brain (plus DNNs)!
