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Martin Wiener

Martin Joel Wiener is an American academic and author. He is currently a research professor at Rice University.

Source: Wikipedia
H-index: 30
Business 45%
Political science 12%
martinwiener.bsky.social
POSTDOC Opening: I'm hiring a postdoc to work with me, @ayeletlandau.bsky.social, and Yuval Benjamini on a 4-year NSF funded project to understand timing and memorability in the visual system. fMRI, EEG, eye-tracking all included.

If interested, please DM or email me for more information!
martinwiener.bsky.social
Thanks to NSF and BSF, we've received a CRCNS grant!! 🎉

I'll be working with the amazing @ayeletlandau.bsky.social and Yuval Benjamini to explore and understand how our sense of time and image memorability are linked. ⌛🧠

We have 2(!) post-doc opportunities available - details coming soon!

by Martin WienerReposted by: Martin Wiener

martinwiener.bsky.social
UPDATE!! HIRING POSTED:

Tenure track assistant professor in Psychology at George Mason University, with a focus on cognitive computational neuroscience. Reviews begin October 21st and continue thereafter.

Email me for more questions/inquiries

listings.jobs.gmu.edu/jobs/tenure-...
martinwiener.bsky.social
All this was the great work of Giuliana Macedo, a killer student in my lab. Huge thanks as well to Brady Roberts, Wilma Bainbridge, and Mathias Sablé-Meyer for providing their stimuli!
martinwiener.bsky.social
Beyond all this, we found that shapes/symbols with more edges were also processed faster in recurrent models of vision, and were also predicted to be more memorable.

Altogether, we think this provides evidence that visual time is guided by information content.
martinwiener.bsky.social
Here, we found that the durations of images that required more steps to generate were both dilated AND more precise. In the image below the ones on the right were seen as longer than the ones on the right.

ALSO, the effect was moderated by how subjectively meaningful subjects found the stimuli
martinwiener.bsky.social
Notably, Exp1 affected only precision, whereas Exp2 affected only accuracy. What's the link? In our final experiment we used line drawings generated by an algorithm from @mathiassablemeyer.bsky.social according to the minimum number of steps to create them.

doi.org/10.1016/j.co...
martinwiener.bsky.social
So what's going on? Do angles matter? We turned to more complicated symbols, both artificial and real:

Here, we found that symbols that contained more edges were dilated. In the attached image, the symbols on the right all seemed to last longer than the ones on the left.

osf.io/preprints/ps...
martinwiener.bsky.social
To answer this, we turned to intermediate layers of vision. We started out with the popular "Bouba Kiki" set. We found that the durations of more angular shapes ("Kiki"-like) were perceived more precisely and faster, modified by how large people perceived them and how consistently they named them.
martinwiener.bsky.social
Last year, we published a paper showing that scene images that were more memorable were also dilated. We found a link to how "fast" these images were processed through recurrent deep learning models of vision.

But, we didn't know WHY they were processed faster

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
martinwiener.bsky.social
Ok, so our sense of time is malleable, right? All kinds of stimuli alter perceived duration: bigger things seem longer than smaller things, red things seem longer than blue things. Scenes, contrast, emotion, biomotion, etc.

We can split these into "high" and "low" levels of vision
martinwiener.bsky.social
Which do you think lasts longer, a spade or an hourglass symbol?

Excited to share a new preprint from my lab, with some interesting and surprising results. 🧵 follows

doi.org/10.31234/osf...
martinwiener.bsky.social
I had to do this for our paper using LaMem. The solution was to find similar images using an open source set (e.g. Pexels) and have a disclaimer in the figure caption. We put the actual images in OSF for anyone who wanted them.
martinwiener.bsky.social
Why is there no Bluesky link on @elsevierconnect.bsky.social? I'm trying to share papers here!
martinwiener.bsky.social
As a grad student, I saw a neuroscientist give a talk about prefrontal neurons doing this or that (cognitive operations). At the end, an emeritus prof in the back asked “at what point can we say a neuron “does” something?”. There was no answer then, and I’m still hunting for it
martinwiener.bsky.social
There's implications/predictions for this, such that the insula should be more active for "empty" than "filled" intervals, and that disruption/enhancement of insula should specifically affect these types. Further implications for ADHD and Schizophrenia
martinwiener.bsky.social
Well, ok, sure!

Bit hard to summarize it in Bsky (Maybe we can discuss at TRF4, Marc?)

General idea is the insula serves as a kind of "backup" timing system. Sensorimotor stimuli dominate, but in their absence (or unreliability) the insula provides an interoceptive signal
martinwiener.bsky.social
Indeed! Craig's interoceptive model of timing is a great one, especially as we see so much evidence pointing to the insula and timing.

I have my own theory of what the insula is doing for time. Maybe one day I'll get to test it 😇
martinwiener.bsky.social
WE ARE HIRING!!

Official posting coming soon for a tenure track assistant professor job in Psychology at George Mason University. Focus on Computational Cognitive Neuroscience and AI.

I’m chairing the search committee, so DMs and emails welcome.
martinwiener.bsky.social
It could be? Historically, it's simply been the difference between a constant stimulus (e.g. 1s tone) or two discrete stimuli for demarcating a time interval (e.g. 2 tone pips separated by 1s). Both indicate the same interval (1s) but the former seems longer.
martinwiener.bsky.social
Very cool findings, but just curious, isn't this a case of the Filled duration illusion? The general finding that "filled" intervals are longer than "empty" ones?

brill.com/view/journal...
brill.com
martinwiener.bsky.social
Very excited to have @brynnsherman.bsky.social join us for the next @timingresforum.bsky.social Virtual Journal Club! Please join us for what should be a very interesting talk on her recent work! Sign-up details below:

mailchi.mp/28692b147cb0...
martinwiener.bsky.social
Any chance of mentioning Leisure Suit Larry in that same shot?

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