Surya Gayet
Assistant professor in cognitive (neuro)science at Utrecht University (The Netherlands), interested in consciousness, working memory, attention, and perception.
Head of the CAP-Lab: http://www.cap-lab.net
ORCID: 0000-0001-9728-1272
- My first TEDx talk just came out. It's always fun to talk about your own research area to the general audience, and its even more fun when you are lucky enough to be supported by such a platform. Happy to hear your thoughts :-) youtu.be/UyUclyHx8d8?...
- It has been cooking in the oven for quite some years, but I am very proud of this work that just got published in Science Advances - spearheaded by the awesome Giacomo Aldegheri:
- 🚨 New paper out in Science Advances 🚨 With @suryagayet.bsky.social and @peelen.bsky.social, in two fMRI studies we investigate mental object rotations that are driven by the scene context, rather than purely by cognitive operations. 🧵 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
- Looking forward to talk about our recent rapid invisible frequency tagging (RIFT) work as part of the Conscious Club - online talks organized by @smfleming.bsky.social, @nadinedijkstra.bsky.social, and others at UCL. Tune in tomorrow (note the time below is in UK time)!
- Looking forward to the first Consciousness Club of the year tomorrow! @suryagayet.bsky.social will be talking to us about “Tracking perceptual competition with Rapid Invisible Frequency Tagging (RIFT)” Wed 14th Jan at 11am UK time All welcome, to join please see metacoglab.org/consciousnes...
- Looking forward to seeing everyone again at NVP (@brain-cognition-nl.bsky.social) today. The CAP-Lab is well represented, with 4 posters and 4 talks. (Also, check the CAP-Lab website, www.cap-lab.net, for a number of recent publications.) Ending the year with a BANG. See you all there 💜
- This includes all the amazing people: @lassedietz.bsky.social, @arora-borealis.bsky.social, Koert Stribos, @liangyouzhang.bsky.social, @yichen-yuan.bsky.social, @andresahakian.bsky.social, @danwang7.bsky.social and the whole @attentionlab.bsky.social 💜
- Reposted by Surya Gayetnew paper in TICS officially out today. great learning from and writing with Anastasia, and super cool cover art from Prof. Pinar Yoldas. www.cell.com/trends/cogni...
- Reposted by Surya GayetExcited to share that my first article is now published in Communications Biology! Humans and many animals have an innate ability to rapidly perceive numerosity—the number of objects in a visual scene. But how does our brain process this fundamental capability? Read the full paper: rdcu.be/eRxMi
- Celebration time 🥳 @liangyouzhang.bsky.social publishes the 1st empirical paper of his PhD! We show that numerosity adaptation (a seemingly high-level stim property) suppresses neural responses in early visual cortex; these adaptation FX increase as we progress thru the visual processing hierarchy.
- Numerosity adaptation suppresses monotonic neural responses to numerosity displays in the early visual cortex, with more suppression for higher numerosity adaptors. Therefore, numerosity adaptation effects begin in early sensory stages of processing. www.nature.com/articles/s42...
- Very proud of this great piece of multi-lab work by Kabir & Husta, et al. Want to measure attention across the visual field (without interfering with ongoing perceptual/attentional processes)? Use RIFT! Here we share our how-to-RIFT knowledge, including analysis code, quantitative comparisons, ..
- Planning on running a RIFT study? In a new manuscript, we put together the RIFT know-how accumulated over the years by multiple labs (@lindadrijvers.bsky.social, @schota.bsky.social, @eelkespaak.bsky.social, with Cecília Hustá and others). Preprint: osf.io/preprints/ps...
- Wait whut!? Doing science with the awesome RR?? Go for it y'all! Can heavily recommend :-)
- We’re looking for a postdoc to join our Max Planck group in Germany some time in 2026. If you have computational and/or neuroimaging expertise, and are interested in questions intersecting perception and cognition, please reach out! I’ll also be happy to chat at the #Bernsteinconference this week.
- If you are up for a nice academic battle, consider responding to our BBS paper "Studying unconscious processing: contention and consensus". The deadline is October 15th. Link below!
- The call for commentaries on our BBS paper is out now (deadline October 15): shorturl.at/Hu3Yu. In the paper (shorturl.at/4Rbk6), we provide recommendations and outstanding issues about designing experimental paradigms, analyzing data, and reporting the results of studies on unconscious processing 👇
- If you were as unfortunate as me, and missed King Kabir (@arora-borealis.bsky.social)'s talk at #ECVP2025 on the differences (in early visual processing) between internal and external attentional selection... no worries, you can find the paper here: share.google/TDIZCDK9puB6...
- Excited to give a talk at #ECVP2025 (Tuesday morning, Attention II) on how spatially biased attention during VWM does not boost excitability the same way it does when attending the external world, using Rapid Invisible Frequency Tagging (RIFT). @attentionlab.bsky.social @ecvp.bsky.social
- Very happy to see this preprint out! The amazing @danwang7.bsky.social was on fire sharing this work at #ECVP2025, gathering loads of attention, and here you can find the whole thing! Using RIFT we reveal how the competition between top-down goals and bottom-up saliency unfolds within visual cortex.
- 🧠 Excited to share that our new preprint is out!🧠 In this work, we investigate the dynamic competition between bottom-up saliency and top-down goals in the early visual cortex using rapid invisible frequency tagging (RIFT). 📄 Check it out on bioRxiv: www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...
- Looking forward to joining #ECVP2025 tomorrow. CAP-Lab is well represented, with 3 talks (@lassedietz.bsky.social on Monday, and @arora-borealis.bsky.social and I on Tuesday), and 2 posters (by @danwang7.bsky.social on Tuesday, and @yichen-yuan.bsky.social on Wednesday). Please come by for a chat! 💜
- And now without bluesky making the background black...
- How is it possible that you can hear "brainstorm" or "green needle" in the EXACT same audio fragment (www.youtube.com/watch?v=1okD...)? I wrote a short and accessible blog post about this with @samdekater.bsky.social for the @brainhelpdesk.bsky.social: brainhelpdesk.nl/en/vraag/how... (in EN or NL)
- Looking forward to @compcogneuro.bsky.social's #CCN2025, which takes place in my backyard this year. If you are there as well, hook me up for a chat, and go and visit @lassedietz.bsky.social, @liangyouzhang.bsky.social, and @arora-borealis.bsky.social's posters on Tue/Wed/Fri. [1/2]
- Or check out their extended abstracts here: Lasse Dietz: 2025.ccneuro.org/poster/?id=1... Liangyou Zhang: 2025.ccneuro.org/poster/?id=c... Kabir Arora: 2025.ccneuro.org/poster/?id=N... [2/2]
- Happy to see this one out in BBS: a multi-lab collaborative effort toward achieving consensus on (10) best practices for researching unconscious processes, and a discussion of (9) outstanding issues. Kudos to Francois, Maor, Liad, & Nathan for leading this project. Looking forward to the responses!
- 📢Excited to share our paper, "Studying unconscious processing: Contention and consensus", published in BBS. The paper is the result of a collaborative effort of 32 leading researchers in the field, from 10 different countries🌏 Check out the full ms👇 www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
- Reposted by Surya Gayet📢Excited to share our paper, "Studying unconscious processing: Contention and consensus", published in BBS. The paper is the result of a collaborative effort of 32 leading researchers in the field, from 10 different countries🌏 Check out the full ms👇 www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
- I had loads of fun today, sharing thoughts and projects during a joint lab-meeting with @nadinedijkstra.bsky.social's Imagine Reality Lab. Two hours were way too short to discuss all the cool projects! Thanks everyone for your contributions 💜
- Reposted by Surya GayetAfter five years of confused staring at Greek letters, it is my absolute pleasure to finally share our (with @smfleming.bsky.social) computational model of mental imagery and reality monitoring: Perceptual Reality Monitoring as Higher-Order inference on Sensory Precision ✨ osf.io/preprints/ps...
- Reposted by Surya GayetNew paper with @peelen.bsky.social showing that objects in familiar configurations (e.g., 🍽️) facilitate one another by 200 ms of visual processing time. Out now in Cortex! 🧠 doi.org/10.1016/j.co...
- Reposted by Surya GayetExciting new preprint from the lab: “Adopting a human developmental visual diet yields robust, shape-based AI vision”. A most wonderful case where brain inspiration massively improved AI solutions. Work with @zejinlu.bsky.social @sushrutthorat.bsky.social and Radek Cichy arxiv.org/abs/2507.03168
- Looking for a PhD in visual cognitive neuroscience, within a colorful lab with a very smart and fun PI? Rosanne is recruiting! I would apply if I wasn't this old.
- Curious about the visual human brain, a vibrant and collaborative lab, and pursuing a PhD in the heart of Europe? My lab is recruiting for a 3-year PhD position. More details: www.rademakerlab.com/job-add
- This was loads of fun! Thanks @docdocdunk.bsky.social and @jthee.bsky.social for the invitation, and for letting us share some of our latest RIFT projects.
- Reposted by Surya Gayet1/ Can AI be conscious? My Behavioral & Brain Sciences target article on ‘Conscious AI and Biological Naturalism’ is now open for commentary proposals. Deadline is June 12. Take-home: real artificial consciousness is very unlikely along current trajectories. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
- Reposted by Surya GayetI am so excited to share that our paper 'A neural basis for distinguishing imagination from reality' is now published in @cp-neuron.bsky.social! 🧠✨ See thread below! doi.org/10.1016/j.ne...
- I am beyond excited to share our new preprint ‘A neural basis for distinguishing between imagination and reality’ with Thomas von Rein, @peterkok.bsky.social and @smfleming.bsky.social! osf.io/preprints/ps... a thread 🧵
- Reposted by Surya GayetThanks to the support of the Dutch Research Council (NWO) and @knaw-nl.bsky.social , we're thrilled to announce the international symposium "Advances in the Encephalographic study of Attention"! 🧠🔍 📅 Date: June 25th & 26th 📍 Location: Trippenhuis, Amsterdam
- Reposted by Surya Gayet
[This post could not be retrieved] - Reposted by Surya Gayet🚨New paper!🚨 Meta-analysis on 4M p-values across 240k psych articles: How has psychology changed since the replication crisis began? How is replicability linked to citations, impact factor, and university prestige? 🧵 Paper: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... Interactive: pbogdan.com/meganal
- While @andresahakian.bsky.social wraps up his thesis (and uploads a bunch of preprints) we share this paper here that came out a while ago, but remained under the radar: we investigated how penalties for external sampling and for making errors differentially affect (unrestricted) working memory use.
- Long overdue! Didn't promote this one amid twitter/X chaos. But nearing the end of my PhD, I want to do this project justice and post it here: Is visual working memory used differently when errors are penalized? Out already 1+ year ago in JEP:LMC: research-portal.uu.nl/ws/files/258... 🧵 (1/3)
- Reposted by Surya GayetThere are 2 PhD positions in my lab in Amsterdam (collaboration with Sander Bohte, @tessamdekker.bsky.social and Ingmar Visser) on NeuroAI of developmental vision. academicpositions.nl/ad/centrum-w...
- Reposted by Surya GayetThrough experience, humans can learn to suppress locations that frequently contain distracting stimuli. Using SSVEPs and ERPs, this study shows that such learned suppression modulates early neural responses, indicating it occurs during initial visual processing. www.jneurosci.org/content/jneu...
- Reposted by Surya Gayet5 years since our first pilot, and 25,000 participants later, I'm super happy this work with Makaela Nartker, @chazfirestone.bsky.social and Howard Egeth on inattentional blindness is now out in eLife! A little 🧵 of what we found... 1/12 elifesciences.org/articles/100...
- Reposted by Surya Gayet[This post could not be retrieved]
- Good morning #VSS2025, if you care for a chat about the role of attention in binding object features (during perceptual encoding and memory maintenance), drop by my poster now (8:30-12:30) in the pavilion (422). Hope to see you there!
- Reposted by Surya GayetTomorrow morning @pieterbarkema.bsky.social will present our 7T fMRI study revealing neural correlates of a postdictive illusion in V1. Very exciting about these results, feedback & Qs welcome! Talk 42.23 in session on multisensory processing, 10:45am - 12:15pm #VSS2025 #neuroskyence #visionscience
- If you are at #VSS2025, come to @chrispaffen.bsky.social talk (room 2 at 3PM), where he discusses how binocular conflict in real-world vision may be resolved in an adaptive manner (favoring either nasal or temporal hemi-fields) to optimally perceive partially occluded objects of interest.
- Reposted by Surya Gayet@vssmtg.bsky.social presentations today! R2, 15:00 @chrispaffen.bsky.social: Functional processing asymmetries between nasal and temporal hemifields during interocular conflict R1, 17:15 @dkoevoet.bsky.social: Sharper Spatially-Tuned Neural Activity in Preparatory Overt than in Covert Attention
- While we are enjoying the Floridian beach, a paper came out in Cortex, spearheaded by killer EEG'er Lu (whith this amazing bunch of coauthors). We find that object size is initially derived solely from retinal image size, and combined with distance cues from the scene context about 150ms later.
- How 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...
- With only a few weeks to go to wrap up his PhD, the amazing Andre publishes this very cool piece of work (the idea of which was fully his creative child), about the role of encoding and retention time on working memory performance. A 🧵 below:
- About time our latest project about time got out! How do self-paced encoding and retention relate to performance in (working) memory-guided actions? Find out now in Memory and Cognition: doi.org/10.3758/s134... (or check the short version below)🧵
- Reposted by Surya GayetAn open letter supporting the international bachelor’s psychology programs threatened for cuts. Proceeding with these cuts would damage some of the most important and impactful psychology departments globally. #supportdutchpsychology openletter.earth/against-lang...
- Reposted by Surya GayetI am so happy—this is the first 1st author paper I have written, since the cancer diagnosis of my late wife seven years ago. 📑 PAPER ALERT: "Beyond binding: from modular to natural vision" in Trends in Cognitive Sciences (2025) sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
- Reposted by Surya Gayet😊🌟✒️ Trotse aankondiging! ✒️🌟😊 Het afgelopen jaar heb ik gewerkt aan het boek "Een wereld vol denkers". In dit boek ga ik op onderzoek naar de gedachten, de #gevoelens en het #bewustzijn van #mensen, #dieren, #planten en kunstmatige intelligentie (#AI). #psychologie #wetenschap 1/5
- Reposted by Surya GayetFirst paper from my PhD is now out @naturecomms.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- Last Friday the irreplaceable @luzixu.bsky.social successfully defended her PhD (at @utrechtuniversity.bsky.social). This has been an incredibly productive 3+ years, and we are sad to see her leave, but are very proud of her accomplishments (with @attentionlab.bsky.social, @chrispaffen.bsky.social)!
- Also many thanks to @andresahakian.bsky.social for his help on three out of four chapters of the dissertation (doi.org/10.33540/2805), and thanks to the committee members for joining the defense!
