News

CONGRATS TO ALL THE MASTER STUDENTS

The MAP lab would like to congratulate with all the master students who graduated in the last 12 months and who have been accepted for PhD programs across all Europe.

Giacomo Aldegheri - Donders Institute / Radboud University Nijmegen, Netherlands

Elio Balestrieri - University of Münster, Germany

Davide Deflorio -- University of Southampton, UK

Gianmarco Maldarelli - Munich Technical University, Germany

Yara Rassi – Scuola IMT Alti Studi Lucca, Italy

Placido Sciortino – University of Bielefeld, Germany

We are very proud of your work!!

A special thanks also to all the people who help them succeed in their projects.

NATIONAL PRIZE FOR BEST SCIENTIFIC CONTRIBUTION TO LUCA RONCONI

Many congratulations to Luca Ronconi, post-doc @ the MAP lab, who will be awarded a prize by the Italian Society of Psychophysiology and Cognitive Neuroscience (SIPF) for the best scientific contribution (i.e. Ronconi et al., 2017 PNAS) by young Italian researchers under 35.

 http://www.sipf.it/news/6678245

The award cerimony will take place in Turin, during the SIPF conference, on November 17th.

POSTER PRIZE TO ELIO BALESTRIERI AT BRESSANONE/BRIXEN SCA CONFERENCE

Elio Balestrieri just won the best poster presentation award at the Cognitive Science Arena conference in Bressanone/Brixen, presenting his master thesis work:
Elio Balestrieri, Luca Ronconi, David Melcher. Temporal dynamics of perceptual and attentional oscillations in a Visual Working Memory task. Cognitive Science Arena, Brixen (BZ, Italy), February 23-24th, 2018.

ARTICLE JUST OUT IN PNAS!

Wutz A, Melcher D & Samaha J (2017), Frequency modulation of neural oscillations according to visual task demands, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1713318115.

ARTICLE ACCEPTED FOR PUBLICATION IN PNAS!

On 22.12.2017 the PNAS Editorial Board gave its final approval for publication of the following article: Wutz A, Melcher D & Samaha J, Frequency modulation of neural oscillations according to visual task demands. The article will be released shortly - we will keep you updated.

ARTICLE JUST PUBLISHED IN PNAS!

Ronconi L, Oosterhof N N, Bonmassar C, & Melcher D. (2017), Multiple oscillatory rhythms determine the temporal organization of perception, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, doi:10.1073/pnas.1714522114.

DAVID MELCHER AND FRANCESCA BACCI on ITALIAN NATIONAL TELEVISION (RAI 5) in a DOCUMENTARY on 'THE SENSE OF BEAUTY'

6 episodes, on Fridays (plus reruns during the week), starting Friday 17th November at 21:15, until Friday 22nd December. David Melcher and Francesca Bacci will be in episodes 1, 3 and 4 (at least). See the trailer.

ARTICLE ACCEPTED FOR PUBLICATION IN JOURNAL OF VISION!

Drewes J, Zhu W & Melcher D, The edge of awareness: mask spatial density, but not color, determines optimal temporal frequency for continuous flash suppression, just accepted for publication by the Journal of Vision.

TENURE POSITION to DAVID'S FORMER PHD STUDENT: ALESSIO FRACASSO at GLASGOW UNIVERSITY

David Melcher's second PhD student at Unitn, as been granted his first (tenured) academic faculty position, starting next year. As of 2018 he will be Lecturer in Cognitive Neuroimaging at University of Glasgow, Institute of Neuroscience and Psychology.

LATEST PUBLICATION JUST OUT IN JOURNAL OF NEUROSCIENCE

Ronconi L & Melcher D (2017), The role of oscillatory phase in determining the temporal organization of perception: evidence from sensory entrainment, Journal of Neuroscience, 1st November 2017, 1704-17; DOI: https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1704-17.2017.

ARTICLE in ITALIAN LOCAL NEWSPAPER on study by CIMeC & MART JUST OUT!

Press article (in Italian) in Il Trentino on publication by De Pisapia N*, Bacci F (MART), Parrott D* & Melcher D* (2016). Brain networks for visual creativity: a functional connectivity study of planning a visual artwork. Scientific Reports. DOI: 10.1038/srep39185. (*CIMeC).

ARTICLE in ITALIAN NATIONAL NEWSPAPER WEBSITE on study by CIMeC & MART

Press article (in Italian) in La Repubblica online on publication by De Pisapia N*, Bacci F (MART), Parrott D* & Melcher D* (2016). Brain networks for visual creativity: a functional connectivity study of planning a visual artwork. Scientific Reports. DOI: 10.1038/srep39185. (*CIMeC).

NEW PAPER JUST ACCEPTED

Fairhall SL, Schwarzbach J, Lingnau A, Van Koningsbruggen M, Melcher D. Spatiotopic updating across saccades revealed by spatially-specific fMRI adaptation. Neuroimage, in press.

OPEN ACCESS ARTICLE JUST OUT

Sengupta R, Bapiraju S, Melcher D. Big and small numbers: Empirical support for a single, flexible mechanism for numerosity perception (2016). Attention, Perception & Psychophysics. Available online at Springer Nature SharedIt.

ARTICLE JUST OUT

Zhu W,  Drewes J,  Peatfield N and Melcher D, Differential visual processing of animal images, with and without conscious awareness, September 2016 Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. Preliminary version already online.

MAKING THE LOCAL HEADLINES: article in Il Trentino newspaper on work behind Current Biology publication

On 15.08.16 the local newspaper 'Il Trentino' publishes an interview with David Melcher on the experiments leading up to the Current Biology publication Temporal integration windows in neural processing and perception aligned to saccadic eye movements.

JUST OUT

Zhu W, Drewes J, Melcher D (2016), Time for Awareness: The Influence of Temporal Properties of the Mask on Continuous Flash Suppression Effectiveness, July 2016, Plos One.

PAPER NOW AVAILABLE ONLINE

Wutz A, Muschter E, van Koningsbruggen MG, Weisz N & Melcher D (2016), Temporal integration windows in neural processing and perception aligned to saccadic eye movements. Current Biology. DOI:10.1016/j.cub.2016.04.070.

WATCH DAVID at the “WIRED NEXT FEST” MILANO 2016

David's presentation at "WIRED NEXT FEST” MILANO 2016.

VSS 2016 - The MAP LAB presents

Wieske van Zoest, Daniel R Saunders and David Melcher-Stroop together: Evidence for shared representations of response set in conflict resolution

MAP LAB POSTERS AT CAOS IN ROVERETO

Map lab member presenting posters at the Concepts, Actions and Objects Workshop in Rovereto on 6th May:

Jan Drewes (with Evelyn Muschter, Weina Zhu and David Melcher): Resting state characteristics predict visual processing speed
Weina Zhu (with Jan Drewes and David Melcher): Mask temporal frequency and spatial density determine continuous flash suppression effectiveness

PAPER JUST ACCEPTED AT CURRENT BIOLOGY

Wutz A, Muschter E, van Koningsbruggen MG, Weisz N & Melcher D (2016) Temporal integration windows in neural processing and perception aligned to saccadic eye movements. Current Biology, in press.

DAVID at the “WIRED NEXT FEST” MILANO 27-29.05.16

David will be a featured keynote speaker at the “Wired Next Fest”, in Milan from May 27th to 29th, 2016

PAPER BY LAB MEMBER, J.DREWES, JUST OUT

Drewes, J., Goren, G., Zhu, W., & Elder, J. H. (2016). Recurrent Processing in the Formation of Shape Percepts. The Journal of
Neuroscience, 36(1), 185-192.

PUBLISHED DECEMBER 2ND 2015

Buonocore A, McIntosh RD, Melcher D (2015). Beyond the point of no return: effects of visual distractors on saccade amplitude and velocity. Journal of Neurophysiology. DOI: 10.1152/jn.00939.2015

JUST OUT AND ONLINE

Buonocore A & Melcher D (2015). Interference during eye movement preparation shifts the timing of peri-saccadic compression. Journal of Vision, Vol.15, 3. doi:10.1167/15.15.3.

NEW PUBLICATION JUST OUT TODAY!

Drewes J, Zhu W, Wutz A & Melcher D (November 2015), Dense sampling reveals behavioral oscillations in rapid visual categorization, Scientific Reports 5, Article 16290.

RAW WORKSHOP ROVERETO 5-8 November 2015

The annual Rovereto Attention Workshop is taking place at CIMeC from 5th to 8th November 2015. See link for the programme and other details.

The Melcher Lab is participating with a number of poster presentations. Among these:

Shared attention slows saccadic target selection
Daniel Saunders

Pre-saccadic shift of attention: uncrowding or spatial pooling?
Antimo Buonocore1, Alessio Fracasso2, David Melcher1

1Center for Mind/Brain Sciences, University of Trento, Rovereto, Italy
2Experimental Psychology, Helmholtz Institute, Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands.

UNI TRENTO MAG

Article out today, 28.09.15, in the University of Trento's web-magazine: the construction of perceptual space time.

MOST DOWNLOADED ARTICLE IN NEUROIMAGE

The most downloaded article in the journal Neuroimage in the last 90 days comes from the ITPAR collaboration between CIMeC (Melcher, Miceli, Jovicich and Hasson) and the NBRC in India: "Brains of verbal memory specialists show anatomical differences in language, memory and visual systems.”
Congratulations to the first author (James Hartzell) and the co-authors!
 

NEW PUBLICATION

Wutz A, Shukla A, Bapi RS, Melcher D (August 2015), Expansion and Compression of Time Correlate with Information Processing in an Enumeration Task, PLoS One, Vol.10(8).

SCIENCE COOPERATION WITH CHINA

In early April, lab members David Melcher and Jan Drewes participated in the first exchange visit to China organised as part of a High-level Foreign Expert Grant funded by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Expert Affairs and hosted by partner institution Yunnan University. Weina Zhu, visiting Professor to the Melcher lab, is also involved in the programme.

NEW PUBLICATION

Buonocore A, Melcher D (in press). Disrupting saccadic updating: visual interference prior to the first saccade elicits spatial errors in the secondary saccade in a double-step task. Experimental Brain Research.

BEST THESIS PRIZE

Lab member, Andreas Wutz, has just won the Valentino Braitenberg Award 2015 for the Best PhD thesis in Cognitive Neuroscience (AA 2013).
See Unitn's dedicated webpage.

See pictures of the award cerimony on 01.04.2015.

ECEM 2015 - Talk accepted

Melcher D and Buonocore A will be giving the talk "A predictive copy of the motor command influences visual stability across saccades" at ECEM 2015 in Vienna, 16-21 August 2015.

Latest publication

Fracasso A, Kaunitz L, Melcher D (in press). Saccade kinematics modulate perisaccadic perception. Journal of Vision.

New Scientist interviews David Melcher - cover story

The New Scientist magazine's latest edition (10 January 2015) includes a cover article on 'How long is now' in which journalist Laura Spinney interviews David Melcher on 'The time illusion: How your brain creates now'.

Scott Fairhall awarded prestigious European Research Council (ERC) grant

Congratulations to MAP lab member Scott Fairhall for winning a prestigious ERC Starting Grant (valued at 1.5 million euro)! His five-year project will use fMRI and MEG to uncover how our brain represents our complex knowledge of the world. He will be looking for smart and hard-working students and postdocs to join the project (see People section for contact details). We wish him all the best in this exciting new endeavour.

This year only 11 ERC STGs were awarded to researchers based in Italian institutions and Scott is the only grant recipient for the University of Trento.

See the ERC press release of 15.12.2014.

David Melcher at the SfN Annual Meeting in Washington DC, 15-19.11.2014

In the Eye Movements and Perception session of the SfN Annual Meeting 2014, David Melcher is holding the following talk today (17.11.14) at 9:00 am:
Continuous perception: Interactions between saccadic remapping and temporal integration windows;
Melcher D, Wutz A, Muschter E, Fracasso A.

David Melcher at the Genoa Science Festival, 26.10.14

David Melcher held a talk at the Science Festival in Genova (26.10; 14:30) on The brain giving time to time - measuring the present.
How long does the present last? From 2 to 3 seconds. Attention, perception and memory interact among themselves to guide our behaviour, but they need time to give us a realistic impression of the moment we are living. David Melcher, professor at Trento University, recipient of the ERC Starting Grant CoPeST and Scientific Coordinator of the ATTEND project ivolving CIMeC, CIBIO, the FBK foundation, IIT and MGH Harvard presented his work in this field in Italian to a vast audience. Starting from examples of temporal illusions that each one of us experiences in his/her daily life, we learn that our brain compresses and expands time according to need and thus understand that time is simply a subjective matter.

If our neurons are so fast, why do we think so slowly? See a one-minute clip of David answering this question at the Genoa Science Festival.

David Melcher on Italian National TV in the Science Programme 'Nautilus', episode on 'Time does not tell lies'.

David Melcher at Marburg University, 21.10.14

As part of the Brain in Action initiative at Marburg University (Germany), on 21.10.14, David Melcher will be giving a talk on Non-retinotopic visual perception: why the world is stable when we move our eyes. See the Philipps Universitatet Marburg website for details.

Latest publications

Wutz A., Melcher D.P.(2014). The temporal window of individuation limits visual capacity. Perception Science in Frontiers in Psychology.

Kaunitz L., Fracasso A., Skujevskis M., Melcher D.P. (2014). Waves of visibility: probing the depth of inter-ocular suppression with transient and sustained targets. Consciousness Research in Frontiers in Psychology.

Sengupta R., Surampudi B.R., and Melcher D. (2014). A visual sense of number emerges from the dynamics of a recurrent on-center off-surround neural network. Brain Research.

Fairhall S.L., Albi A., Melcher D. (2014). Temporal Integration Windows for Naturalistic Visual Sequences. PLOS One.

Wutz A., Weisz N., Braun C. & Melcher D. (2014). Temporal windows in visual processing: 'Pre-stimulus brain state' and 'post-stimulus phase reset' segregate visual transients on different temporal scales. Journal of Neuroscience, 34(4), 1554-65. Download here.

For further publications, click here.

Latest conferences attended

David Melcher, Jan Drewes and Weina Zhu held talks and poster presentations at ECVP, 24-28.08.2014, in Belgrade. See the posters.

Andreas Wutz, Jennifer Corbett, Jan Drewes, David Melcher and Weina Zhu held talks and poster presentations at VSS, 15-20.05.2014 in Florida. See the presentation and posters.