Nadine Dijkstra
@nadinedijkstra.bsky.social
PI of the https://imaginerealitylab.org/ @uclbrainscience.bsky.social where we investigate the neural and computational mechanisms of mental imagery and reality monitoring. Activist about mental health and EDI in academia. She/her.
Pinned
I 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...
Reposted by Nadine Dijkstra
New preprint with amazing work from @nchalas.bsky.social:
How does respiration influence (un-)predictable near-threshold perception? MEG, arousal modulation, excitability states, respiration phase-resolved connectivity changes - it's all there :)
#neuroskyence
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
How does respiration influence (un-)predictable near-threshold perception? MEG, arousal modulation, excitability states, respiration phase-resolved connectivity changes - it's all there :)
#neuroskyence
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Respiration as a dynamic modulator of sensory sampling
Respiration dynamically modulates sensory perception by orchestrating transient states of the brain and the body. Using simultaneous recordings of high-density magneto-encephalography (MEG), respirati...
www.biorxiv.org
June 30, 2025 at 12:20 PM
New preprint with amazing work from @nchalas.bsky.social:
How does respiration influence (un-)predictable near-threshold perception? MEG, arousal modulation, excitability states, respiration phase-resolved connectivity changes - it's all there :)
#neuroskyence
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
How does respiration influence (un-)predictable near-threshold perception? MEG, arousal modulation, excitability states, respiration phase-resolved connectivity changes - it's all there :)
#neuroskyence
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Reposted by Nadine Dijkstra
Very proud to have launched our manifesto and report to make Dutch academia more sustainable - a moment to celebrate after two years of hard work with the Green Young Academy, DJA and many inspiring colleagues
dejongeakademie.nl/en/news/3148...
dejongeakademie.nl/en/news/3148...
November 5, 2025 at 7:29 PM
Very proud to have launched our manifesto and report to make Dutch academia more sustainable - a moment to celebrate after two years of hard work with the Green Young Academy, DJA and many inspiring colleagues
dejongeakademie.nl/en/news/3148...
dejongeakademie.nl/en/news/3148...
Reposted by Nadine Dijkstra
Please repost! I am looking for a PhD candidate in the area of Computational Cognitive Neuroscience to start in early 2026.
The position is funded as part of the Excellence Cluster "The Adaptive Mind" at @jlugiessen.bsky.social.
Please apply here until Nov 25:
www.uni-giessen.de/de/ueber-uns...
The position is funded as part of the Excellence Cluster "The Adaptive Mind" at @jlugiessen.bsky.social.
Please apply here until Nov 25:
www.uni-giessen.de/de/ueber-uns...
November 4, 2025 at 1:57 PM
Please repost! I am looking for a PhD candidate in the area of Computational Cognitive Neuroscience to start in early 2026.
The position is funded as part of the Excellence Cluster "The Adaptive Mind" at @jlugiessen.bsky.social.
Please apply here until Nov 25:
www.uni-giessen.de/de/ueber-uns...
The position is funded as part of the Excellence Cluster "The Adaptive Mind" at @jlugiessen.bsky.social.
Please apply here until Nov 25:
www.uni-giessen.de/de/ueber-uns...
Reposted by Nadine Dijkstra
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, ..
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...
Preprint: osf.io/preprints/ps...
OSF
osf.io
October 29, 2025 at 10:58 AM
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, ..
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, ..
This is such a fun idea! A cross-decoding perception-imagery challenge 🤩 Looking forward to seeing what comes out (and maybe having a sneaky go myself when I should be doing admin...)!
How well do classifiers trained on visual activity actually transfer to non-visual reactivation?
#Decoding studies often rely on training in one (visual) condition and applying it to another (e.g. rest-reactivation). However: How well does this work? Show us what makes it work and win up to 1000$!
#Decoding studies often rely on training in one (visual) condition and applying it to another (e.g. rest-reactivation). However: How well does this work? Show us what makes it work and win up to 1000$!
IMAGINE-decoding-challenge
Predict which words participants were hearing, based upon brain activity recordings of visually seeing these items?
www.kaggle.com
October 24, 2025 at 11:42 AM
This is such a fun idea! A cross-decoding perception-imagery challenge 🤩 Looking forward to seeing what comes out (and maybe having a sneaky go myself when I should be doing admin...)!
Reposted by Nadine Dijkstra
✨My first first-author paper is out✨
Entorhinal grid-like codes for visual space during memory formation in @natcomms.nature.com ➡️ rdcu.be/eLRm2
Big thanks to everyone @isabellacwagner.bsky.social, @tobiasstaudigl.bsky.social, @olejensen.bsky.social, @doellerlab.bsky.social, @clauslamm.bsky.social
Entorhinal grid-like codes for visual space during memory formation in @natcomms.nature.com ➡️ rdcu.be/eLRm2
Big thanks to everyone @isabellacwagner.bsky.social, @tobiasstaudigl.bsky.social, @olejensen.bsky.social, @doellerlab.bsky.social, @clauslamm.bsky.social
Entorhinal grid-like codes for visual space during memory formation
Nature Communications - Eye movements during scene viewing are tied to grid-like codes in the entorhinal cortex. Grid signals are specific to later remembered scenes, covary with activity in...
rdcu.be
October 20, 2025 at 4:42 PM
✨My first first-author paper is out✨
Entorhinal grid-like codes for visual space during memory formation in @natcomms.nature.com ➡️ rdcu.be/eLRm2
Big thanks to everyone @isabellacwagner.bsky.social, @tobiasstaudigl.bsky.social, @olejensen.bsky.social, @doellerlab.bsky.social, @clauslamm.bsky.social
Entorhinal grid-like codes for visual space during memory formation in @natcomms.nature.com ➡️ rdcu.be/eLRm2
Big thanks to everyone @isabellacwagner.bsky.social, @tobiasstaudigl.bsky.social, @olejensen.bsky.social, @doellerlab.bsky.social, @clauslamm.bsky.social
Reposted by Nadine Dijkstra
Consciousness science as a marketplace of rationalizations
my commentary on @smfleming.bsky.social and @matthiasmichel.bsky.social's thought-provoking BBS paper, and more generally about the field.
osf.io/preprints/ps...
my commentary on @smfleming.bsky.social and @matthiasmichel.bsky.social's thought-provoking BBS paper, and more generally about the field.
osf.io/preprints/ps...
OSF
osf.io
October 10, 2025 at 6:05 PM
Consciousness science as a marketplace of rationalizations
my commentary on @smfleming.bsky.social and @matthiasmichel.bsky.social's thought-provoking BBS paper, and more generally about the field.
osf.io/preprints/ps...
my commentary on @smfleming.bsky.social and @matthiasmichel.bsky.social's thought-provoking BBS paper, and more generally about the field.
osf.io/preprints/ps...
Interesting new preprint on the subjective experience of imagery. Does it even make sense to describe it as 'seeing', and what does a high vividness score indicate? Really great to see a push towards better characterisation of what people actually experience during imagery!
Long time in the making: our preprint of survey study on the diversity with how people seem to experience #mentalimagery. Suggests #aphantasia should be redefined as absence of depictive thought, not merely "not seeing". Some more take home msg:
#psychskysci #neuroscience
doi.org/10.1101/2025...
#psychskysci #neuroscience
doi.org/10.1101/2025...
October 3, 2025 at 1:31 PM
Interesting new preprint on the subjective experience of imagery. Does it even make sense to describe it as 'seeing', and what does a high vividness score indicate? Really great to see a push towards better characterisation of what people actually experience during imagery!
Awesome work by @jorge-morales.bsky.social and team, using LLMs to suggest that propositional reasoning might be enough to solve classic imagery tasks! ✨
Imagine an apple 🍎. Is your mental image more like a picture or more like a thought? In a new preprint led by Morgan McCarty—our lab's wonderful RA—we develop a new approach to this old cognitive science question and find that LLMs excel at tasks thought to be solvable only via visual imagery. 🧵
Artificial Phantasia: Evidence for Propositional Reasoning-Based Mental Imagery in Large Language Models
This study offers a novel approach for benchmarking complex cognitive behavior in artificial systems. Almost universally, Large Language Models (LLMs) perform best on tasks which may be included in th...
arxiv.org
October 1, 2025 at 6:32 AM
Awesome work by @jorge-morales.bsky.social and team, using LLMs to suggest that propositional reasoning might be enough to solve classic imagery tasks! ✨
Reposted by Nadine Dijkstra
Imagine an apple 🍎. Is your mental image more like a picture or more like a thought? In a new preprint led by Morgan McCarty—our lab's wonderful RA—we develop a new approach to this old cognitive science question and find that LLMs excel at tasks thought to be solvable only via visual imagery. 🧵
Artificial Phantasia: Evidence for Propositional Reasoning-Based Mental Imagery in Large Language Models
This study offers a novel approach for benchmarking complex cognitive behavior in artificial systems. Almost universally, Large Language Models (LLMs) perform best on tasks which may be included in th...
arxiv.org
October 1, 2025 at 1:27 AM
Imagine an apple 🍎. Is your mental image more like a picture or more like a thought? In a new preprint led by Morgan McCarty—our lab's wonderful RA—we develop a new approach to this old cognitive science question and find that LLMs excel at tasks thought to be solvable only via visual imagery. 🧵
Reposted by Nadine Dijkstra
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.
September 29, 2025 at 5:15 PM
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.
Reposted by Nadine Dijkstra
Ahem. Mental imagery (& imagery-critical) researchers should read this:
www.nature.com/articles/s44...
www.nature.com/articles/s44...
Self-reports are better measurement instruments than implicit measures - Nature Reviews Psychology
Implicit measures are widely used because they are assumed to be superior to self-reports. In this Perspective, Corneille and Gawronski challenge this view and argue that claims about disadvantages of...
www.nature.com
September 23, 2025 at 6:49 AM
Ahem. Mental imagery (& imagery-critical) researchers should read this:
www.nature.com/articles/s44...
www.nature.com/articles/s44...
Reposted by Nadine Dijkstra
Hellohello #ICON2025! Please come and have a chat with me today at 10.45am about some content-specific alpha fluctuations! 🤓
Finally, on Friday at 10:45, we have Imagine Reality Lab affiliate @dotproduct.bsky.social presenting:
P6.36 | Pre-stimulus Shape Predictions Fluctuate At Alpha Rhythms And Bias Subsequent Perception.
Showing how content-specific pre-stimulus alpha-band oscillations influence perception.
P6.36 | Pre-stimulus Shape Predictions Fluctuate At Alpha Rhythms And Bias Subsequent Perception.
Showing how content-specific pre-stimulus alpha-band oscillations influence perception.
September 19, 2025 at 8:15 AM
Hellohello #ICON2025! Please come and have a chat with me today at 10.45am about some content-specific alpha fluctuations! 🤓
Reposted by Nadine Dijkstra
Deadline Oct 15: Asst. prof. (tenure track), AI in Psych Science, @uoftpsychology.bsky.social jobs.utoronto.ca/job/Toronto-...
Assistant Professor - Artificial Intelligence in Psychological Science
Assistant Professor - Artificial Intelligence in Psychological Science
jobs.utoronto.ca
September 10, 2025 at 10:28 PM
Deadline Oct 15: Asst. prof. (tenure track), AI in Psych Science, @uoftpsychology.bsky.social jobs.utoronto.ca/job/Toronto-...
Reposted by Nadine Dijkstra
A birthday is a good time to reflect! To mark SPM @ 30, this month's issue of Cerebral Cortex features deeply insightful commentaries on neuroimaging analysis from Ed Bullmore, Peter Bandettini, Peter Fox, Pedro Valdes-Sosa, Klaas Enno Stephan, Viktor Jirsa, et al [1/2] academic.oup.com/cercor/issue
Issues | Cerebral Cortex | Oxford Academic
Publishes papers on the development, organization, plasticity, and function of the cerebral cortex, including the hippocampus.
academic.oup.com
September 16, 2025 at 8:16 AM
A birthday is a good time to reflect! To mark SPM @ 30, this month's issue of Cerebral Cortex features deeply insightful commentaries on neuroimaging analysis from Ed Bullmore, Peter Bandettini, Peter Fox, Pedro Valdes-Sosa, Klaas Enno Stephan, Viktor Jirsa, et al [1/2] academic.oup.com/cercor/issue
Reposted by Nadine Dijkstra
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Representational Geometries of Perception and Working Memory: A Pilot Study
Tomoya Nakamura's first fMRI project
... in which we hereby release a preprint as a way of pre-registration
🧠📈
Representational Geometries of Perception and Working Memory: A Pilot Study
Tomoya Nakamura's first fMRI project
... in which we hereby release a preprint as a way of pre-registration
🧠📈
Representational Geometries of Perception and Working Memory: A Pilot Study
This study aims to compare the neural representational geometry of visual perception and visual working memory using human fMRI. In our pilot experiment, observers viewed a face-scene blended image (s...
www.biorxiv.org
September 13, 2025 at 2:38 AM
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Representational Geometries of Perception and Working Memory: A Pilot Study
Tomoya Nakamura's first fMRI project
... in which we hereby release a preprint as a way of pre-registration
🧠📈
Representational Geometries of Perception and Working Memory: A Pilot Study
Tomoya Nakamura's first fMRI project
... in which we hereby release a preprint as a way of pre-registration
🧠📈
Reposted by Nadine Dijkstra
Spotlighting researchers sharing open-source paradigms in PsychoPy! ✨
This week:
Individual differences in visual attention: A short, reliable, open-source, multilingual test of multiple object tracking in PsychoPy
🔗 link.springer.com/article/10.3...
#OpenScience #PsychologyResearch #Research
This week:
Individual differences in visual attention: A short, reliable, open-source, multilingual test of multiple object tracking in PsychoPy
🔗 link.springer.com/article/10.3...
#OpenScience #PsychologyResearch #Research
Individual differences in visual attention: A short, reliable, open-source, and multilingual test of multiple object tracking in PsychoPy - Behavior Research Methods
Individual differences in attentional abilities provide an interesting approach in studying visual attention as well as the relation of attention to other psychometric measures. However, recent…
link.springer.com
September 12, 2025 at 9:00 AM
Spotlighting researchers sharing open-source paradigms in PsychoPy! ✨
This week:
Individual differences in visual attention: A short, reliable, open-source, multilingual test of multiple object tracking in PsychoPy
🔗 link.springer.com/article/10.3...
#OpenScience #PsychologyResearch #Research
This week:
Individual differences in visual attention: A short, reliable, open-source, multilingual test of multiple object tracking in PsychoPy
🔗 link.springer.com/article/10.3...
#OpenScience #PsychologyResearch #Research
Reposted by Nadine Dijkstra
Finally, on Friday at 10:45, we have Imagine Reality Lab affiliate @dotproduct.bsky.social presenting:
P6.36 | Pre-stimulus Shape Predictions Fluctuate At Alpha Rhythms And Bias Subsequent Perception.
Showing how content-specific pre-stimulus alpha-band oscillations influence perception.
P6.36 | Pre-stimulus Shape Predictions Fluctuate At Alpha Rhythms And Bias Subsequent Perception.
Showing how content-specific pre-stimulus alpha-band oscillations influence perception.
September 11, 2025 at 3:52 PM
Finally, on Friday at 10:45, we have Imagine Reality Lab affiliate @dotproduct.bsky.social presenting:
P6.36 | Pre-stimulus Shape Predictions Fluctuate At Alpha Rhythms And Bias Subsequent Perception.
Showing how content-specific pre-stimulus alpha-band oscillations influence perception.
P6.36 | Pre-stimulus Shape Predictions Fluctuate At Alpha Rhythms And Bias Subsequent Perception.
Showing how content-specific pre-stimulus alpha-band oscillations influence perception.
Reposted by Nadine Dijkstra
On Wednesday at 10:45 @pazbartal.bsky.social will present:
P3.48 | The Influence Of Scene Context On Perceptual Reality Monitoring
Presenting preliminary results that suggest that imagery is more vivid and more likely to be confused for perception within congruent scene contexts.
P3.48 | The Influence Of Scene Context On Perceptual Reality Monitoring
Presenting preliminary results that suggest that imagery is more vivid and more likely to be confused for perception within congruent scene contexts.
September 11, 2025 at 3:45 PM
On Wednesday at 10:45 @pazbartal.bsky.social will present:
P3.48 | The Influence Of Scene Context On Perceptual Reality Monitoring
Presenting preliminary results that suggest that imagery is more vivid and more likely to be confused for perception within congruent scene contexts.
P3.48 | The Influence Of Scene Context On Perceptual Reality Monitoring
Presenting preliminary results that suggest that imagery is more vivid and more likely to be confused for perception within congruent scene contexts.
Looking forward to #ICON2025 next week! We will have several presentations on mental imagery, reality monitoring and expectations:
To kick us off, on Tuesday at 15:30, Martha Cottam will present:
P2.12 | Presence Expectations Modulate the Neural Signatures of Content Prediction Errors
To kick us off, on Tuesday at 15:30, Martha Cottam will present:
P2.12 | Presence Expectations Modulate the Neural Signatures of Content Prediction Errors
September 11, 2025 at 3:28 PM
Looking forward to #ICON2025 next week! We will have several presentations on mental imagery, reality monitoring and expectations:
To kick us off, on Tuesday at 15:30, Martha Cottam will present:
P2.12 | Presence Expectations Modulate the Neural Signatures of Content Prediction Errors
To kick us off, on Tuesday at 15:30, Martha Cottam will present:
P2.12 | Presence Expectations Modulate the Neural Signatures of Content Prediction Errors
Reposted by Nadine Dijkstra
Who doesn't like a good model of the brain? Yet, from simple regression to neural nets, some limitations keep popping up (e.g., overfitting) @mjwolff.bsky.social & I saw some cool but puzzling data, ran a quick analysis & found one such limitation: model mimicry. Now in #naturecommunications &🧵below
Model mimicry limits conclusions about neural tuning and can mistakenly imply unlikely priors
Nature Communications - Model mimicry limits conclusions about neural tuning and can mistakenly imply unlikely priors
rdcu.be
July 2, 2025 at 8:50 AM
Who doesn't like a good model of the brain? Yet, from simple regression to neural nets, some limitations keep popping up (e.g., overfitting) @mjwolff.bsky.social & I saw some cool but puzzling data, ran a quick analysis & found one such limitation: model mimicry. Now in #naturecommunications &🧵below
Reposted by Nadine Dijkstra
Fun write up of Imagination/perception work from @nadinedijkstra.bsky.social @smfleming.bsky.social and others: www.scientificamerican.com/article/newf...
I was just live on Canadian Breakfast radio chatting about it. Bad pun, but this work really has captured the public imagination!
I was just live on Canadian Breakfast radio chatting about it. Bad pun, but this work really has captured the public imagination!
Your Brain Has a Reality Check System—Here’s How It Works
Seeing and imagining use similar brain machinery. New research reveals the brain circuit that identifies what is real, which may help scientists understand conditions such as schizophrenia
www.scientificamerican.com
September 10, 2025 at 1:24 PM
Fun write up of Imagination/perception work from @nadinedijkstra.bsky.social @smfleming.bsky.social and others: www.scientificamerican.com/article/newf...
I was just live on Canadian Breakfast radio chatting about it. Bad pun, but this work really has captured the public imagination!
I was just live on Canadian Breakfast radio chatting about it. Bad pun, but this work really has captured the public imagination!
Reposted by Nadine Dijkstra
Traveling on from beautiful Switzerland to beautiful Edinburgh for #BACN25. Hope to see many of you tomorrow morning, for our symposium on neural re-use of resources for external & internal processing! With @rademaker.bsky.social @nadinedijkstra.bsky.social @larsmuckli.bsky.social & Ed Silson
September 10, 2025 at 1:07 PM
Traveling on from beautiful Switzerland to beautiful Edinburgh for #BACN25. Hope to see many of you tomorrow morning, for our symposium on neural re-use of resources for external & internal processing! With @rademaker.bsky.social @nadinedijkstra.bsky.social @larsmuckli.bsky.social & Ed Silson
Reposted by Nadine Dijkstra
📢 Job announcement: Two (!) 3-year postdoc jobs in our lab at UCL 📢
🧠💫🔊 We are looking for postdocs interested in the abstract mechanisms underlying social cognition. Modelling, fMRI and non-invasive ultrasound, a new deep-brain stimulation method.
Please RT
www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...
🧠💫🔊 We are looking for postdocs interested in the abstract mechanisms underlying social cognition. Modelling, fMRI and non-invasive ultrasound, a new deep-brain stimulation method.
Please RT
www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...
UCL – University College London
UCL is consistently ranked as one of the top ten universities in the world (QS World University Rankings 2010-2022) and is No.2 in the UK for research power (Research Excellence Framework 2021).
www.ucl.ac.uk
August 7, 2025 at 2:25 PM
📢 Job announcement: Two (!) 3-year postdoc jobs in our lab at UCL 📢
🧠💫🔊 We are looking for postdocs interested in the abstract mechanisms underlying social cognition. Modelling, fMRI and non-invasive ultrasound, a new deep-brain stimulation method.
Please RT
www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...
🧠💫🔊 We are looking for postdocs interested in the abstract mechanisms underlying social cognition. Modelling, fMRI and non-invasive ultrasound, a new deep-brain stimulation method.
Please RT
www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...
Reposted by Nadine Dijkstra
Deadline for the 2 postdoc jobs with us at @ucl.ac.uk in one week, 17th Sep. On the roles of goals in organising social representations in prefrontal cortex (modelling, neuroimaging, transcranial ultrasound).
📢 Job announcement: Two (!) 3-year postdoc jobs in our lab at UCL 📢
🧠💫🔊 We are looking for postdocs interested in the abstract mechanisms underlying social cognition. Modelling, fMRI and non-invasive ultrasound, a new deep-brain stimulation method.
Please RT
www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...
🧠💫🔊 We are looking for postdocs interested in the abstract mechanisms underlying social cognition. Modelling, fMRI and non-invasive ultrasound, a new deep-brain stimulation method.
Please RT
www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...
UCL – University College London
UCL is consistently ranked as one of the top ten universities in the world (QS World University Rankings 2010-2022) and is No.2 in the UK for research power (Research Excellence Framework 2021).
www.ucl.ac.uk
September 10, 2025 at 9:20 AM
Deadline for the 2 postdoc jobs with us at @ucl.ac.uk in one week, 17th Sep. On the roles of goals in organising social representations in prefrontal cortex (modelling, neuroimaging, transcranial ultrasound).