Welcome to the
Bernhardt-Walther Lab!

The Bernhardt-Walther Lab at the University of Toronto investigates the neural and computational principles of high-level sensory perception. We employ neuroimaging (fMRI, MEG, EEG), psychophysics, eye tracking, and computational modeling to explore how people see and hear their real-world environments. Current interests in the lab include the representation of shape in real-world scenes, perceptual organization, categorization with GAN-generated stimuli and empirical aesthetics. We always welcome new ideas and research directions!

News

2025

• A new paper with Moaz Shoura and Adrian Nestor investigates the other-race effect with GAN-based image reconstruction. Now out in Behavioral Research Methods.

• We have a new paper on comparing the neural signatures of creativity and aesthetics with Oshin Vartanian, Dela Farzanfar, and Pablo Tinio!

• The Cognitive Science Research Community (CoRC) has a new website!

• You are invited to attend the Toronto Aesthetics Sciences Conference (TASC) on April 8th at University College! Please register by February 28th.

• 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! https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/7xzvb_v2

• Our work on perceived curvature is featured in the University of Toronto News today!

2024

• How do we perceive curvature? A new paper investigates subjective and computational measures of curvature and finds that they are represented in different brain regions. "Neural dissociation between computational and perceived measures of curvature" just out in Scientific Reports.

• A new review paper on "Aesthetic processing in neurodiverse populations" just out in Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews! This paper started as a class project in my seminar on the "Neuroscience of Aesthetics". Congratulations to all the students who contributed!

• Congratulations to Dr. Gaeun Son for successfully defending her PhD thesis. Gaeun has been doing excellent work in the lab, such as work on Scene Wheels. She will continue her stellar academic career as a postdoc at Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea.

• We are looking for candidates for a Mutli-Institutional, Interdisciplinary Postdoctoral Fellowship

• Brief category learning distorts perceptual space for complex scenes - another beautiful paper by Gaeun Son, Dirk B. Walther and Michael L. Mack using Scene Wheels to measure the distortion of perceptual space near category boundaries!

• Claudia Damiano wins a travel award to attend IAEA in Palma de Mallorca!

• Mei Yang wins a VSS undergrad travel award! Looking forward to VSS!

• The natural scene network - new book chapter by Diane Beck and Dirk B. Walther in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Neuroscience

• The Arts and Science website has a nice feature on Dela Farzanfar's recent Psych Science paper on manipulating aesthetic liking of images!

2023

• Morteza Rezanejad's paper "Shape-Based Measures Improve Scene Categorization" is published in IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence!

• Charlotte Leferink's paper in collaboration with Jordan DeKraker, Iva K. Brunec, Stefan Köhler, and Morris Moscovitch about the pRF size and scene versus face specialization in the hippocampus and medial temporal cortex was published in Cerebral Cortex today!

• New paper in PACA by Elizabeth Zhou, John Wilder, Claudia Damiano, and Dirk B. Walther on the Neural dissociation between computational and subjective image complexity published today!

• Seohee's and Morteza's paper on memorability of line drawings was published today!

• The Varsity is featuring our lab's research in their newest edition: The emotional connotations of visual art

• Our work on conveying emotions through colors and shape is featured for public outreach at Futurum Careers.

• The companion paper for the Mid-level Vision Toolbox has finally been published in Frontiers in Computer Science.

• Changing What You Like: Modifying Contour Properties Shifts Aesthetic Valuations of Scenes - Dela Farzanfar's excellent first-year project was just published in Psychological Science

• Just because your child isn’t paying attention, doesn’t mean they’re not learning - Yaelan Jung's recent paper covered in Arts and Science News

• New paper on the role of attention in children's neural representations of visual input. See Publications.

• Psychology Today covered our work on visual features for conveying emotions!

• Our recent work on the visual expressions of emotions features on the Arts and Science front page as well as the University of Toronto News page.

• The U of T Magazine has an article on Dirk's "Psychology of Magic" class.

• Two new papers published! One on complexity in Cognition, spear-headed by Cameron Kyle-Davidson and one on artistic expressions of emotions, by Claudia Damiano, Pinaki Gayen et al. in Journal of Vision. Check them out in Publications.

• We have a busy conference schedule this spring. Dela will present at the Society for the Neuroscience of Creativity meeting in San Francisco in March. Dirk will present at TeaP in Trier, Germany. We have four presentations at the Vision Sciences Society in St. Pete Beach in May. And Charlotte is going to represent the lab at the Organization for Human Brain Mapping in Montreal in July. Find us at those conferences!

2022

• We are looking for one or two new PhD students for Fall 2023 to work on perceptual grouping and/or visual aesthetics. The ideal candidates have strong computational background and/or research experience in visual psychophysics or fMRI. If you are interested, apply here by December 1st, 2022. Come, join our lab!

• 2nd call for abstracts for this unique special Research Topic on Perceptual Organization at Frontiers in Psych, CS, and Neuroscience! Please contact me if you have any questions about the suitability of material that you might have. 

• Morteza Rezanejad publishes new paper in CVPR!

• Congratulations to Dela Farzanfar for winning a travel award for IAEA!  

• Morteza Rezanejad accepts Scientist position at Recursion!

• Congratulations to Charlotte Leferink for winning a VSS travel award! 

• Congratulations to Dela Farzanfar for winning a poster award at SfNC2022!