The BrisBrain Lab

Here, @koyanokw et al. show that 🐒 neurons in certain face patches barely react to pareidolia (illusory faces in objects). doi.org/10.1016/j.pneu… To those who have argued that the brain "obviously" processes stimuli that look like faces as faces—it's not that simple.

Are we sensitive to pain-related facial expressions? Chris Buckland is interested in what genuine pain looks like and whether its recognition elicits approach or avoidance behaviors from observers. His first paper looks at injury-related expressions: sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

New research by @_EleanorMoses et al. isolates the nasal hemiretina via a monocular viewing paradigm to probe the subcortical pathway's visual sensitivity. A nuanced look at how our brain detects fear! 🧠👀@UQpsych royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.10…

🎉 Huge congratulations to Zihe Wei on winning a People’s Choice Award at HDR Day @UQpsych! 🏆 Her presentation on the neural coding of faces for social perception captivated the audience and highlighted the exciting research she's been doing! Well done, Zihe! 🌟 #HDRDay

New review in J Neuro on the neural encoding of bodies for social perception. jneurosci.org/content/44/40/…

Every year the UQ school of psychology challenges students (and staff) to transform their lecture material and research topics into art. Today, we showcased nearly 50 entries at the Psychology As Art Exhibition. @UQPsych Congratulations to all the winners!

I am very pleased to announce that @lina_teichmann is visiting @UQPsych this week and will be presenting her latest scientific discoveries in a special talk tomorrow at 10AM. Please join us!

BIG congratulations to recent graduates, @_EleanorMoses and Linda! Its been such a privilege to have you working in the @Brisbrain_lab during your pre-doctoral studies and we are collectively so proud of everything you have accomplished.

By going "beyond faces" they unearthed preliminary evidence that the amygdala does not encode putative stimulus categories or visual properties like the visual cortex. Instead, the amygdala may be encoding stimulus meaning, which *will* vary across individual subjects.

Previous research has focused on understanding how the primate amygdala responds to face stimuli. In this new paper, @jesstaubert @susanwardle Amanda Patterson and @Chris_I_Baker examined its larger response profile using NHP fMRI. academic.oup.com/cercor/article…

How many research papers have content that is fascinating to both researchers and toddlers? Some of the stimuli in this face pareidolia study are top-tier 😀 A great eye-tracking study from @jesstaubert and colleagues, using the TRACKPixx3 and VIEWPixx!

This is a fun collab with @OttmarLipp where we looked at socio-emotional biases in the perception of #facepareidolia The upshot is that we categorise happy illusory expressions faster when the illusory face is perceived as feminine. psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2024-…

Does #facepareidolia reflect a failed prediction on the part of a detection mechanism? In a new @SciReports paper, @BlakeSaurels and @nataliepeluso report a bias towards #facepareidolia in the periphery - a result consistent with the detection hypothesis. rdcu.be/dGtfR

@_EleanorMoses has published her research investigating the impact of oxytocin administration on the neural processing of visual stimuli that differ in social relevance and emotional valence @nicole__nelson @jesstaubert and Alan Pegna academic.oup.com/scan/article/1…

Sustained looking at faces at 5 months of age is associated with socio-communicative skills in the second year of life #OpenAccess doi.org/10.1111/infa.1…

First experiment from my PhD! Dynamic faces are great, but videos are a nightmare for experimental control, so many of us use dynamic morphs of photos. Except we showed that if you can’t use videos with natural face motion, you might be better off using static faces 😬 rdcu.be/dx9K5

We will miss you @GBStuartt Thanks for your many valuable contributions to the lab (and for laughing at @jesstaubert 's jokes)

Today our lab has to farewell @GBStuartt because she is moving on to bigger and better things. Greta has played many roles in the lab over the last few years. This preprint showcases just a few of her research skills and her interest in #facepareidolia: doi.org/10.31234/osf.i…

Are representations in visual cortex organised according to stimulus features or affordances? Here, @ShrutiJapee and I measured responses to highly variable facial expressions in 🐵 The upshot: exact visual features were not as important as we thought! doi.org/10.1162/jocn_a…