Tim Gastrell
@tgastrell.bsky.social
Cognition and Computation 🧠 Tech enjoyer 💻
🥝➡️🦘
PhD candidate in Cog/Comp Neuroscience at The University of Queensland 🧠
Studying how the brain leverages experience to support sensory processing and decision-making under uncertainty.
🥝➡️🦘
PhD candidate in Cog/Comp Neuroscience at The University of Queensland 🧠
Studying how the brain leverages experience to support sensory processing and decision-making under uncertainty.
Reposted by Tim Gastrell
Hi! Just released a preprint on occluded object EEG decoding with @renrutmailliw.bsky.social, Madi Jarvis, Harry Nagel, @amandakrobinson.bsky.social, and Hinze Hogendoorn- Check it out if of interest! doi.org/10.31234/osf...
OSF
doi.org
August 6, 2026 at 2:16 AM
Hi! Just released a preprint on occluded object EEG decoding with @renrutmailliw.bsky.social, Madi Jarvis, Harry Nagel, @amandakrobinson.bsky.social, and Hinze Hogendoorn- Check it out if of interest! doi.org/10.31234/osf...
I'll be presenting this work in poster form today 11am at @expsyanz.bsky.social. If you're interested in perceptual decisions, Bayesian inference or neural decoding come and have a chat!
🏰 New preprint! 🏰
(w/ the excellent @neuronomist.bsky.social & Prof. Jason Mattingley)
For my PhD I've been using EEG, psychophysics and modelling to explore how the brain uses uncertainty to balance sensory information against expectations about what's out there.
🧵1/n
(w/ the excellent @neuronomist.bsky.social & Prof. Jason Mattingley)
For my PhD I've been using EEG, psychophysics and modelling to explore how the brain uses uncertainty to balance sensory information against expectations about what's out there.
🧵1/n
Late Integration of Prior Expectations During Precision Weighted Perceptual Decisions https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.04.13.718329v1
July 1, 2026 at 9:34 PM
I'll be presenting this work in poster form today 11am at @expsyanz.bsky.social. If you're interested in perceptual decisions, Bayesian inference or neural decoding come and have a chat!
Reposted by Tim Gastrell
Feeling really proud of this one: a review of Bayesian efficient coding with Máté Lengyel and Paul Bays (@bayslab.org) is now available online in TICS!
authors.elsevier.com/a/1nF3i4sIRv...
authors.elsevier.com/a/1nF3i4sIRv...
June 10, 2026 at 6:54 PM
Feeling really proud of this one: a review of Bayesian efficient coding with Máté Lengyel and Paul Bays (@bayslab.org) is now available online in TICS!
authors.elsevier.com/a/1nF3i4sIRv...
authors.elsevier.com/a/1nF3i4sIRv...
🏰 New preprint! 🏰
(w/ the excellent @neuronomist.bsky.social & Prof. Jason Mattingley)
For my PhD I've been using EEG, psychophysics and modelling to explore how the brain uses uncertainty to balance sensory information against expectations about what's out there.
🧵1/n
(w/ the excellent @neuronomist.bsky.social & Prof. Jason Mattingley)
For my PhD I've been using EEG, psychophysics and modelling to explore how the brain uses uncertainty to balance sensory information against expectations about what's out there.
🧵1/n
Late Integration of Prior Expectations During Precision Weighted Perceptual Decisions https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.04.13.718329v1
April 17, 2026 at 12:01 AM
🏰 New preprint! 🏰
(w/ the excellent @neuronomist.bsky.social & Prof. Jason Mattingley)
For my PhD I've been using EEG, psychophysics and modelling to explore how the brain uses uncertainty to balance sensory information against expectations about what's out there.
🧵1/n
(w/ the excellent @neuronomist.bsky.social & Prof. Jason Mattingley)
For my PhD I've been using EEG, psychophysics and modelling to explore how the brain uses uncertainty to balance sensory information against expectations about what's out there.
🧵1/n
Reposted by Tim Gastrell
Late Integration of Prior Expectations During Precision Weighted Perceptual Decisions https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.04.13.718329v1
April 16, 2026 at 5:15 PM
Late Integration of Prior Expectations During Precision Weighted Perceptual Decisions https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.04.13.718329v1
Reposted by Tim Gastrell
Fantastic presentation from @tvcottier.bsky.social kicking off our first meeting for 2026. His recent work suggests super-recognisers prioritise identity cues in faces over other dimensions, & that expressive cues interfere with them - suggesting these processes are not independent
February 25, 2026 at 10:15 AM
Fantastic presentation from @tvcottier.bsky.social kicking off our first meeting for 2026. His recent work suggests super-recognisers prioritise identity cues in faces over other dimensions, & that expressive cues interfere with them - suggesting these processes are not independent
Reposted by Tim Gastrell
Second up was @tgastrell.bsky.social whose research explored whether neural tuning depends on the precision of learned priors using a visual dot motion paradigm...
February 25, 2026 at 10:35 AM
Second up was @tgastrell.bsky.social whose research explored whether neural tuning depends on the precision of learned priors using a visual dot motion paradigm...
Excited to be sharing some recent work of mine with this fantastic group!
Our first meeting for 2026 is just 5 days away!
To kick things off we have 2 awesome Tims presenting their research @tvcottier.bsky.social & @tgastrell.bsky.social
You can join in-person or online via Zoom - register here to receive the link 👇
uniofqueensland.syd1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...
To kick things off we have 2 awesome Tims presenting their research @tvcottier.bsky.social & @tgastrell.bsky.social
You can join in-person or online via Zoom - register here to receive the link 👇
uniofqueensland.syd1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...
February 22, 2026 at 8:22 AM
Excited to be sharing some recent work of mine with this fantastic group!
Reposted by Tim Gastrell
Introducing @brisepsi.bsky.social - we're an experimental psychology initiative run by grad students in Brisbane (Meanjin) across UQ & QUT 🧠
We host a monthly dose of freshly baked research (students, ECRs, & bigwigs) followed by social goodness. Help us grow with a follow! 🤗 #neuroskyence
We host a monthly dose of freshly baked research (students, ECRs, & bigwigs) followed by social goodness. Help us grow with a follow! 🤗 #neuroskyence
February 16, 2026 at 5:58 AM
Introducing @brisepsi.bsky.social - we're an experimental psychology initiative run by grad students in Brisbane (Meanjin) across UQ & QUT 🧠
We host a monthly dose of freshly baked research (students, ECRs, & bigwigs) followed by social goodness. Help us grow with a follow! 🤗 #neuroskyence
We host a monthly dose of freshly baked research (students, ECRs, & bigwigs) followed by social goodness. Help us grow with a follow! 🤗 #neuroskyence
Reposted by Tim Gastrell
Preventing data leakage in neural decoding - "for autocorrelated neural time series, standard k-fold cross-validation can dramatically overstate performance." www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
January 30, 2026 at 8:29 AM
Preventing data leakage in neural decoding - "for autocorrelated neural time series, standard k-fold cross-validation can dramatically overstate performance." www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Reposted by Tim Gastrell
December 12, 2025 at 8:11 AM
Excited to be presenting new EEG results from my PhD at this years @acnsau.bsky.social annual meeting in Melbourne.
If you're interested in how priors affect multivariate stimulus representations in the brain come through to the Sensation and Perception stream this afternoon!
#ACNS2025
If you're interested in how priors affect multivariate stimulus representations in the brain come through to the Sensation and Perception stream this afternoon!
#ACNS2025
November 27, 2025 at 1:57 AM
Excited to be presenting new EEG results from my PhD at this years @acnsau.bsky.social annual meeting in Melbourne.
If you're interested in how priors affect multivariate stimulus representations in the brain come through to the Sensation and Perception stream this afternoon!
#ACNS2025
If you're interested in how priors affect multivariate stimulus representations in the brain come through to the Sensation and Perception stream this afternoon!
#ACNS2025
Reposted by Tim Gastrell
New paper in Imaging Neuroscience by Margaret Jane Moore, Amanda K. Robinson, and Jason B. Mattingley:
Expectation dynamically modulates the representational time course of objects and locations
doi.org/10.1162/IMAG...
Expectation dynamically modulates the representational time course of objects and locations
doi.org/10.1162/IMAG...
November 13, 2025 at 8:51 AM
New paper in Imaging Neuroscience by Margaret Jane Moore, Amanda K. Robinson, and Jason B. Mattingley:
Expectation dynamically modulates the representational time course of objects and locations
doi.org/10.1162/IMAG...
Expectation dynamically modulates the representational time course of objects and locations
doi.org/10.1162/IMAG...
Reposted by Tim Gastrell
The final bit of work from my PhD just got published at JOV! We looked at similarity judgements made for naturalistic image patches, and whether these are predicted by simple image statistics… (spoiler: yep!)
Link to paper: doi.org/10.1167/jov....
1/11
Link to paper: doi.org/10.1167/jov....
1/11
Low-level features predict perceived similarity for naturalistic images | JOV | ARVO Journals
doi.org
October 8, 2025 at 7:13 AM
The final bit of work from my PhD just got published at JOV! We looked at similarity judgements made for naturalistic image patches, and whether these are predicted by simple image statistics… (spoiler: yep!)
Link to paper: doi.org/10.1167/jov....
1/11
Link to paper: doi.org/10.1167/jov....
1/11
Reposted by Tim Gastrell
Just published some work at Scientific Reports! We investigated visual adaptation following free viewing of a film (Casablanca) that had its oriented contrast altered. To our surprise, we found adaptation effects to be pretty negligible…
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
1/10
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
1/10
Investigating orientation adaptation following naturalistic film viewing - Scientific Reports
Scientific Reports - Investigating orientation adaptation following naturalistic film viewing
www.nature.com
September 29, 2025 at 8:27 AM
Just published some work at Scientific Reports! We investigated visual adaptation following free viewing of a film (Casablanca) that had its oriented contrast altered. To our surprise, we found adaptation effects to be pretty negligible…
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
1/10
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
1/10
Reposted by Tim Gastrell
🚨Pre-print of some cool data from my PhD days!
doi.org/10.1101/2025...
☝️Did you know that visual surprise is (probably) a domain-general signal and/or operates at the object-level?
✌️Did you also know that the timing of this response depends on the specific attribute that violates an expectation?
doi.org/10.1101/2025...
☝️Did you know that visual surprise is (probably) a domain-general signal and/or operates at the object-level?
✌️Did you also know that the timing of this response depends on the specific attribute that violates an expectation?
The Latency of a Domain-General Visual Surprise Signal is Attribute Dependent
Predictions concerning upcoming visual input play a key role in resolving percepts. Sometimes input is surprising, under which circumstances the brain must calibrate erroneous predictions so that perc...
doi.org
August 19, 2025 at 12:30 AM
🚨Pre-print of some cool data from my PhD days!
doi.org/10.1101/2025...
☝️Did you know that visual surprise is (probably) a domain-general signal and/or operates at the object-level?
✌️Did you also know that the timing of this response depends on the specific attribute that violates an expectation?
doi.org/10.1101/2025...
☝️Did you know that visual surprise is (probably) a domain-general signal and/or operates at the object-level?
✌️Did you also know that the timing of this response depends on the specific attribute that violates an expectation?
Reposted by Tim Gastrell
My final Registered Report from my PhD is now out in Cortex!
We investigated the role of dopamine & HD-tDCS in mind wandering & sustained attention. While stimulation had no effect, increasing dopamine reduced spontaneous thought and may protect against performance deficits. doi.org/10.1016/j.co...
We investigated the role of dopamine & HD-tDCS in mind wandering & sustained attention. While stimulation had no effect, increasing dopamine reduced spontaneous thought and may protect against performance deficits. doi.org/10.1016/j.co...
On the neural substrates of mind wandering and dynamic thought: A drug and brain stimulation study
The impact of mind wandering on our daily lives ranges from diminishing productivity, to facilitating creativity and problem solving. There is evidenc…
www.sciencedirect.com
July 19, 2025 at 3:16 AM
My final Registered Report from my PhD is now out in Cortex!
We investigated the role of dopamine & HD-tDCS in mind wandering & sustained attention. While stimulation had no effect, increasing dopamine reduced spontaneous thought and may protect against performance deficits. doi.org/10.1016/j.co...
We investigated the role of dopamine & HD-tDCS in mind wandering & sustained attention. While stimulation had no effect, increasing dopamine reduced spontaneous thought and may protect against performance deficits. doi.org/10.1016/j.co...
Reposted by Tim Gastrell
I really like this paper. I fear that people think the authors are claiming that the brain isn’t predictive though, which this study cannot (and does not) address. As the title says, the data purely show that evoked responses are not necessarily prediction errors, which makes sense!
1/3) This may be a very important paper, it suggests that there are no prediction error encoding neurons in sensory areas of cortex:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
I personally am a big fan of the idea that cortical regions (allo and neo) are doing sequence prediction.
But...
🧠📈 🧪
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
I personally am a big fan of the idea that cortical regions (allo and neo) are doing sequence prediction.
But...
🧠📈 🧪
Sensory responses of visual cortical neurons are not prediction errors
Predictive coding is theorized to be a ubiquitous cortical process to explain sensory responses. It asserts that the brain continuously predicts sensory information and imposes those predictions on lo...
www.biorxiv.org
July 15, 2025 at 11:43 AM
I really like this paper. I fear that people think the authors are claiming that the brain isn’t predictive though, which this study cannot (and does not) address. As the title says, the data purely show that evoked responses are not necessarily prediction errors, which makes sense!
Excited to be presenting behavioral and modeling work looking at perceptual decision making under uncertainty with recently learned priors at the EPC/APCV joint meeting today at UNSW, Sydney!
Catch me at 2:45pm in Gallery 1!
@expsyanz.bsky.social
#epc2025
Catch me at 2:45pm in Gallery 1!
@expsyanz.bsky.social
#epc2025
June 20, 2025 at 2:28 AM
Excited to be presenting behavioral and modeling work looking at perceptual decision making under uncertainty with recently learned priors at the EPC/APCV joint meeting today at UNSW, Sydney!
Catch me at 2:45pm in Gallery 1!
@expsyanz.bsky.social
#epc2025
Catch me at 2:45pm in Gallery 1!
@expsyanz.bsky.social
#epc2025
New paper @ JOV!
With Matt Oxner, Frank Schumann and David Carmel.
🧠 Perception of ambiguous motion is shaped by recent visual experience - but does this differ across the visual field?
Yes!
Full open access paper here (Gastrell et al., 2025, Journal of Vision): 🔗 doi.org/10.1167/jov....
🧵
With Matt Oxner, Frank Schumann and David Carmel.
🧠 Perception of ambiguous motion is shaped by recent visual experience - but does this differ across the visual field?
Yes!
Full open access paper here (Gastrell et al., 2025, Journal of Vision): 🔗 doi.org/10.1167/jov....
🧵
June 4, 2025 at 4:51 AM
New paper @ JOV!
With Matt Oxner, Frank Schumann and David Carmel.
🧠 Perception of ambiguous motion is shaped by recent visual experience - but does this differ across the visual field?
Yes!
Full open access paper here (Gastrell et al., 2025, Journal of Vision): 🔗 doi.org/10.1167/jov....
🧵
With Matt Oxner, Frank Schumann and David Carmel.
🧠 Perception of ambiguous motion is shaped by recent visual experience - but does this differ across the visual field?
Yes!
Full open access paper here (Gastrell et al., 2025, Journal of Vision): 🔗 doi.org/10.1167/jov....
🧵
Reposted by Tim Gastrell
*Please repost* @sjgreenwood.bsky.social and I just launched a new personalized feed (*please pin*) that we hope will become a "must use" for #academicsky. The feed shows posts about papers filtered by *your* follower network. It's become my default Bluesky experience bsky.app/profile/pape...
March 10, 2025 at 6:14 PM
*Please repost* @sjgreenwood.bsky.social and I just launched a new personalized feed (*please pin*) that we hope will become a "must use" for #academicsky. The feed shows posts about papers filtered by *your* follower network. It's become my default Bluesky experience bsky.app/profile/pape...
Reposted by Tim Gastrell
William James's take on psychophysics is *incredible*. Worth reading the whole quote. #psychSciSky #philsky #VisionScience
"But psychology is passing into a less simple phase. Within a few years what one may call a microscopic psychology has arisen in Germany, carried on by experimental methods,
"But psychology is passing into a less simple phase. Within a few years what one may call a microscopic psychology has arisen in Germany, carried on by experimental methods,
March 17, 2025 at 6:19 PM
William James's take on psychophysics is *incredible*. Worth reading the whole quote. #psychSciSky #philsky #VisionScience
"But psychology is passing into a less simple phase. Within a few years what one may call a microscopic psychology has arisen in Germany, carried on by experimental methods,
"But psychology is passing into a less simple phase. Within a few years what one may call a microscopic psychology has arisen in Germany, carried on by experimental methods,
Reposted by Tim Gastrell
Out now in AP&P!
Effects of perceptual and decisional uncertainty on serial dependence in orientation perception
link.springer.com/article/10.3...
link.springer.com/article/10.3...
Effects of perceptual and decisional uncertainty on serial dependence in orientation perception - Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics
Where assimilative serial dependence occurs in perception, responses to visual attributes such as orientation are typically biased towards the attributes of visual stimuli seen in the recent past. Ser...
link.springer.com
March 8, 2025 at 2:20 AM
Out now in AP&P!
Reposted by Tim Gastrell
Cognitive psych is often traced back to the 1950s.
Psychology is often traced to Wundt's lab in 1879.
Textbooks speak of "proto-psychologists" like Fechner & Helmholtz in the 1800s... Westerners all.
Have you heard about Ibn al-Haytham, whose work predated them by 100s of years?
1/4
Psychology is often traced to Wundt's lab in 1879.
Textbooks speak of "proto-psychologists" like Fechner & Helmholtz in the 1800s... Westerners all.
Have you heard about Ibn al-Haytham, whose work predated them by 100s of years?
1/4
January 31, 2025 at 9:55 AM
Cognitive psych is often traced back to the 1950s.
Psychology is often traced to Wundt's lab in 1879.
Textbooks speak of "proto-psychologists" like Fechner & Helmholtz in the 1800s... Westerners all.
Have you heard about Ibn al-Haytham, whose work predated them by 100s of years?
1/4
Psychology is often traced to Wundt's lab in 1879.
Textbooks speak of "proto-psychologists" like Fechner & Helmholtz in the 1800s... Westerners all.
Have you heard about Ibn al-Haytham, whose work predated them by 100s of years?
1/4