Matthias Nau

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam | VU

Entorhinal grid cells map the local environment, but their involvement beyond spatial navigation remains elusive. We examined human functional MRI responses during a highly controlled visual tracking task and show that entorhinal cortex exhibited a sixfold rotationally symmetric signal encoding gaze direction. Our results provide evidence for a gri...

We explore the environment not only by navigating, but also by viewing our surroundings with our eyes. Here we review growing evidence that the mam- malian hippocampal formation, extensively studied in the context of navigation and memory, mediates a representation of visual space that is stably anchored to the external world. This visual represent...

Functional magnetic resonance imaging of the medial temporal lobe is difficult due to its proximity to air cavities and distance to the MRI head coil. This guide discusses these challenges and recommends procedures to optimize echo-planar imaging sequences and improve data quality.

A bstract Rapid progress in technologies such as calcium imaging and electrophysiology has seen a dramatic increase in the size and extent of neural recordings. Even so, interpretation of this data often depends on manual operations and requires considerable knowledge about the nature of the representation. Decoding provides a means to infer the in...

When recalling past events, patterns of gaze position and neural activity resemble those observed during the original experience. We hypothesized that these two phenomena, known as gaze re-instatement and neural reactivation, are linked through a common process that underlies the reinstatement of past experiences during memory retrieval. Here, we t...

Cognitive neuroscience seeks generalizable theories explaining the relationship between behavioral, physiological and mental states. In pursuit of such theories, we propose a theoretical and empirical framework that centers on understanding task demands and the mutual constraints they impose on behavior and neural activity. Task demands emerge from...

Grid cells have been proposed to encode task regularities that allow predicting future states. Entorhinal grid-like signals might therefore mirror behavioral biases associated with relying on task regularities, like regression-to-the-mean biases in time estimation. Here, we tested this proposal using functional magnetic resonance imaging and a rapi...

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a methodological cornerstone of neuroscience. Most studies measure blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) signal using echo-planar imaging (EPI), Cartesian sampling, and image reconstruction with a one-to-one correspondence between the number of acquired volumes and reconstructed images. However, EPI sch...

The brain encodes the statistical regularities of the environment in a task-specific yet flexible and generalizable format. Here, we seek to understand this process by bridging two parallel lines of research, one centered on sensorimotor timing, and the other on cognitive mapping in the hippocampal system. By combining functional magnetic resonance...

Human medial parietal cortex (MPC) is recruited during multiple cognitive. Previously, we demonstrated regions specific to recall of people or places and proposed that the functional organization of MPC mirrors the category selectivity defining the medial-lateral axis of ventral temporal cortex (VTC). However, prior work considered recall of people...

Extensive sampling of neural activity during rich cognitive phenomena is critical for robust understanding of brain function. Here we present the Natural Scenes Dataset (NSD), in which high-resolution functional magnetic resonance imaging responses to tens of thousands of richly annotated natural scenes were measured while participants performed a...

Viewing behavior provides a window into many central aspects of human cognition and health, and it is an important variable of interest or confound in many functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies. To make eye tracking freely and widely available for MRI research, we developed DeepMReye, a convolutional neural network (CNN) that decodes...

The brain encodes the statistical regularities of the environment in a task-specific yet flexible and generalizable format. Here, we seek to understand this process by converging two parallel lines of research, one centered on sensorimotor timing, and the other on cognitive mapping in the hippocampal system. By combining functional magnetic resonan...

As the global health crisis unfolded, many academic conferences moved online in 2020. This move has been hailed as a positive step towards inclusivity in its attenuation of economic, physical, and legal barriers and effectively enabled many individuals from groups that have traditionally been underrepresented to join and participate. A number of st...

Rapid progress in technologies such as calcium imaging and electrophysiology has seen a dramatic increase in the size and extent of neural recordings. Even so, interpretation of this data requires considerable knowledge about the nature of the representation and often depends on manual operations. Decoding provides a means to infer the information...

The move from in-person to online scientific conferences due to the global health crisis has been hailed as a positive step towards inclusivity in its attenuation of economic, physical and legal barriers. Yet pre-existing and new challenges to truly inclusive conference experiences remain unaddressed. While acknowledging the benefits of an online s...

Viewing behavior provides a window into many central aspects of human cognition and health, and it is an important variable of interest or confound in many fMRI studies. To make eye tracking freely and widely available for MRI research, we developed DeepMReye: a convolutional neural network that decodes gaze position from the MR-signal of the eyeba...

The brain derives cognitive maps from sensory experience that guide memory formation and behavior. Despite extensive efforts, it still remains unclear how the underlying population activity unfolds during spatial navigation and how it relates to memory performance. To examine these processes, we combined 7T-fMRI with a kernel-based encoding model o...

Early diagnosis and accurate segmentation of brain tumors are imperative for successful treatment. Unfortunately, manual segmentation is time consuming, costly and despite extensive human expertise often inaccurate. Here, we present an MRI-based tumor segmentation framework using an autoencoder-regularized 3D-convolutional neural network. We traine...

Environmental boundaries anchor cognitive maps that support memory. However, trapezoidal boundary geometry distorts the regular firing patterns of entorhinal grid cells, proposedly providing a metric for cognitive maps. Here we test the impact of trapezoidal boundary geometry on human spatial memory using immersive virtual reality. Consistent with...

Minimizing spatial uncertainty is essential for navigation, but the neural mechanisms remain elusive. Here we combine predictions of a simulated grid cell system with behavioural and fMRI measures in humans during virtual navigation. First, we showed that polarising cues produce anisotropy in motion parallax. Secondly, we simulated entorhinal grid...

Early diagnosis and accurate segmentation of brain tumors are imperative for successful treatment. Unfortunately, manual segmentation is time consuming, costly and despite extensive human expertise often inaccurate. Here, we present an MRI-based tumor segmentation framework using an autoencoder-regularized 3D-convolutional neural network. We traine...

Eye movements induce visual motion that can complicate the stable perception of the world. The visual system compensates for such self-induced visual motion by integrating visual input with efference copies of eye movement commands. This mechanism is central as it does not only support perceptual stability but also mediates reliable perception of w...