The Venue
Casa Convalescència,
Carrer St Antoni Maria Claret 171,08041 Barcelona
The Casa Convalescència is one of the last modernist buildings in Barcelona, It was built by
Domènech i Roura in the 1920’s. It is in the historical complex of Hospital de la Santa Creu iSant Pau, which was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997.

Instructions for participantsCommittee

Conference Talks
Each talk lasts exactly 15 minutes; 12
minutes presentation, 3 minutes Q&A. The
chairs will be asked to strictly adhere to thetime. Bring a USB stick or your own laptop.
All presenters are asked to be in the lecturehall 20 minutes before the session.
Symposium talks
The duration of symposium talks should be
agreed beforehand with each symposium
organizer.
Posters
All posters should be in ‘Portrait’ orientation,
maximum size 94cmx200cm (DIN-A0 size
fits well). On the day of their presentation,
all poster presenters may set up theirposters from 9:00am onwards.
WiFi:
Network ID: Casa Convalescencia
Login: cip22
Password: wifi2022

Organizers
Xavier Otazu
Xim Cerda-Company
C. Alejandro Parraga
Olivier Penacchio
Scientific Committee
Ana Clemente
Cristina de la Malla
Claudia Feitosa-Santana
Nara Ikumi
Matthias Keil
Julio Lillo
Joan Lopez-Moliner
Marta Matamala-Gomez
Enric Munar
Sérgio Nascimento
Ignacio Serrano-Pedraza
Mireia Torralba
David Travieso
Adrià Vilà-Balló

Schematic Programme:
Monday 27

Tuesday 28

Wednesday 29

Registration

Registration

Talks

Talks

Room ventilation

Room ventilation

10:00

Symposium“Artificial VisualIntelligence”.

Symposium“Perception andMedical Research”

Symposium“Multisensory
integration in
Neurorehabilitation”

11:30

Coffee break

Coffee break

Coffee break

LectureLecture

13:00

Lunch

Lunch

14:30

Talks

Talks

15:30

Posters&
Break

Posters
&
Break

16:30

Symposium“Individual
Differences”

Symposium“Pleasure inperception”

18:00

End of Presentations

End of Presentations

08:30
08:45

Reception&
Registration

09:45

12:00

18:30

Social Activity

Talks

Business meeting

Detailed Programme:
Monday 27th
08:30-10:00
10:00-11:30

11:30-12:00
12:00-13:00

13:00-14:30
14:30-15:30
14:30
14:45
15:00
15:15
15:30-16:30

16:30-18:00
16:30
17:00

17:30

Reception and registration
Symposium “Artificial Visual Intelligence”.
Organizer: Arash Akbarinia
S1.1 - “A visual psychophysics decalogue to check the human nature of artificial
networks" Jesús Malo
S1.2 - "Learning to see Stuff: Unsupervised models of material perception" Kate
Storrs
S1.3 - "Leveraging a massive fMRI data set and deep learning to synthesize
images preferred by functional brain areas" Katja Seeliger
S1.4 - "Measuring sensitivity of deep networks in low-level vision" Arash
Akbarinia
Coffee Break
I01 - NeuroBiT/SEPEX Lecture
Iris Groen “Understanding real-world vision in the human brain using
computational models”
Lunch
Talks
Moderator: Cristina de la Malla
T01 - “The strength of the interaction between fine and coarse scales isunaffected under monocular viewing” Sandra Arranz-Paraíso
T02 - “Measuring the interaction between coarse and fine moving scales at long
durations, different sizes, and viewing conditions” Omar Bachtoula
T03 - “Basic psychophysics of deep networks trained for image segmentation”
P. Hernández-Cámara
T04 - “Differences in the use of position and motion information for saccadic andgoal directed actions” Cristina de la Malla
Posters and BreakP01 - “Moving things with your eye’s mind. Dynamic mental imagery of visual
stimuli in motion and its link to time perception” Jose Á. Muñoz
P02 - “Basic psychophysics of deep networks trained via maximum
differentiation” Qiang Li
P03 - “Basic psychophysics of deep networks trained for subjective image
distortion” J. Vila-Tomás
P04 - “The detection of perceptual statistical irregularities interacts acrosssensory modalities” Marc Sabio
Symposium “Individual Differences”
Organizer: Raul Luna del Valle
S2.1 - “Compensating the effects of individual differences in colour vision:
potential uses and limitations of Daltonization methods” Julio Lillo
S2.2 - “Factor analysis of individual differences reveals two temporal- frequency
mechanisms in frontoparallel cyclopean motion” Ichasus LlamasCornejo
S2.3 - “Metacognition about the use of Basic Colour Terms in Red-Green
Dichromats” Humberto Moreira

Tuesday 28th
08:30-08:45
08:45-09:45
08:45
09:00
09:15
09:30
09:45-10:00
10:00-11:30

11:30-12:30
12:00-13:00
13:00-14:30
14:30-15:30
14:30
14:45
15:00
15:15-16:30

16:30-18:00

18:30-later

Meeting and registration
Talks
Moderator: Mireia Torralba
T05 - “Conflict monitoring and attentional adjustment during binocular rivalry”
Alice Drew
T06 - “Studying error perception in complex scenarios stresses the importanceof midfrontal theta during social cognition” Teresa Sousa
T07 - “Using occipital alpha-bursts to modulate behaviour in real-time” Irene
Vigué-Guix
T08 - “Alpha fluctuations regulate the accrual of visual information toawareness” Mireia Torralba
Room ventilation
Symposium “Perception and Medical Research”
Organizer: Daniel Linares
S3.1 - “Reduced serial dependence suggests deficits in synaptic potentiation inanti-NMDAR encephalitis and schizophrenia” Heike Stein
S3.2 - “Disentangling altered sensory perception in migraine” Nara Ikumi
S3.3 - “Motion sensitivity and spatial suppression in psychosis and anti-NMDAR
encephalitis” Daniel Linares
Coffe BreakI02 - SEPEX Lecture
Manuel Spitschan “What does the eye tell the clock?”
Lunch
Talks
Moderator: Raquel Gil Rodríguez
T09 - “Local surround for colour constancy using virtual reality” Raquel Gil
Rodríguez
T10 - “The influence of different screens and lighting conditions when selecting
the achromatic point in digital images” Andreia E. Gomes
T11 - “How universal is preference for curvature? A systematic review andmeta-analysis” Erick G. Chuquichambi
Posters and BreakP05 - “Colour differences between consecutive hyperspectral acquisitions ofpaintings” Alexandre Monteiro
P06 - “Don´t let me down: emotional context influences pitch perception” Marta
Szabina Papai
P07- “Experimental aesthetics without semantics” C. Alejandro Parraga
P08- “Saccadic characteristics differ between different types of strabismus”
Elena Sanz
P09- “Perception Of Computer-Manipulated Scenes: A Pilot Study With People
With Functional Diversity” Luis L. Lobato-Rincón
Symposium “Pleasure in perception”
Organizer: Ana Clemente
S4.1 - “Sensory liking” Martin Skov
S4.2 - “The embodied neuroaesthetics of dance” Emily S. Cross
S4.3 - “Sensorimotor impact on pleasure, emotion and aesthetics in theperception of dance” Beatriz Calvo-Merino
S4.4 - “Musical Pleasure and the Paradox of Negative Emotions” David Huron
S4.5 - “Exploring the interplay between perceptual and reward networks in theability to experience pleasure from music” Josep Marco-PallarésSocial Activity
Trekking on foot: Carretera de les aigües

Wednesday 29th
08:30-08:45
08:45-09:45
08:45
09:00
09:15
09:30
09:45-10:00
10:00-11:30

11:30-12:00
12:00-13:00
12:00
12:15
12:30
13:00-14:00

Meeting and registration
Talks
Moderator: Joan López-Moliner
T12 - “A neurophysiological explanation of S-R spatial compatibility effects”
José M. Gavilan
T13 - “Position and speed visual precision in a timing task under different
temporal constraints” Joan López-Moliner
T14 - “The two phases of grasping with a Sensory Substitution Glove” Carlos
de PazT15 - “Memories of Collisions” Matthias S. Keil
Room ventilation
Symposium “Multisensory integration in Neurorehabilitation”
Organizer: Marta Matamala-Gomez
S5.1 - “Home-based enriched Music-supported Therapy in the rehabilitation of
upper limb motor functions for patients with chronic stroke” Emma Segura
S5.2 - “Using interactive movement sonification to alter body perception andsupport physical activity in physically inactive adults” Judith Ley-Flores
S5.3 - “Impact of virtual embodiment on motor resonance after a Mirror-PAS
protocol” Francesca Frisco
S5.4 - “Effects of multisensory audio-visual stimulation for the rehabilitation of
unilateral spatial neglect” Luca Zigiotto
Coffee Break
Talks
Moderator: Nara Ikumi
T16 - “Hard to ignore? Irrelevant distractors receive partial attention in acontextual cueing task” M Pilar Aivar
T17 - “Investigating Auditory Role-Reversal Effects Using Spatialized Pitch
Distributions” Thomas McGee
T18 - “Virtual Reality maze generator tool for the study of spatial navigation inhumans” Sergi Àvila Sangüesa
Business Meeting

Abstracts:
Invited talks

I01

NeuroBiT/SEPEX Lecture:
Title: “Understanding real-world vision in the human brain using computationalmodels” Author: Iris Groen.
Affiliations: Video & Image Sense Lab, Informatics Institute, University of
Amsterdam
Abstract: Visual perception in humans is mediated by a large and complex
network of brain regions. Neuroscientists traditionally study this system byexamining neural activity elicited by highly controlled, simplified visual inputs,
such as gratings, line drawings or cut-out objects. Real-life visual perception
however requires rapid processing of a continuous stream of complex naturalscenes, which typically contain a multitude of objects, high-level semantics, andcomplex temporal structure.
In this talk, I will describe a number of studies in which we attempted to quantify
such complex, more realistic visual inputs and link them to brain activity andhuman behaviour using computational models. In particular, I will discuss three
separate research lines dedicated at better understanding the neuralcomputations underlying real-world vision in the human brain: 1) rapid
perception of natural scenes, studied with EEG and models of low-level image
statistics; 2) the role of high-level semantics and action affordances in naturalscene categorization, studied using multi-voxel pattern fMRI and deep neuralnetwork models; and 3) temporal dynamics of visual responses, studied with
ECoG and temporal encoding models.
I02

SEPEX Lecture:
Title: “What does the eye tell the clock?”
Author: Manuel Spitschan
Affiliations: Technical University of Munich & Max Planck Institute for Biological
Cybernetics
Abstract: Illumination of the world around us enables vision and visual
perception. Additionally, light exposure profoundly affects our physiology andbehaviour by entraining the circadian system to the light-dark cycle andmodifying melatonin production. These “non-visual” effects are mediated by asubset of retinal ganglion cells, the melanopsin-containing intrinsicallyphotosensitive retinal ganglion cells (ipRGCs). Demonstrating how the different
photoreceptors in the eye – including the cones and rods – contribute to nonvisual light-mediated functions requires specific methods for stimulating
photoreceptors in isolation. Here, I will describe recent work on uncovering themechanisms underlying the non-visual effects of light and recent forays intotranslating these findings into the real world.
Symposium talks:

S1.1

Title: “A visual psychophysics decalogue to check the human nature of artificial
networks"
Author: Jesús Malo
Affiliations: Facultat de Física. Image Processing Laboratory. Universitat deValència
Abstract: Current artificial neural networks were originally inspired by classicalvision models. Therefore, following their success in computer vision, it is not
surprising that a growing body of literature considers deep learning as theultimate framework also in visual neuroscience. The main difference between
current deep networks and classical vision models is the procedure to obtain
their free parameters: while vision models are intended to fit physiological or
psychophysical measures, deep networks are optimized to fulfill a certain(visual) task over a training dataset. However, both strategies to get theparameters (fit the biology or fit the statistics) have fundamental problems todescribe vision. On the one hand, traditional physiological/psychophysicalexperiments are not easy. As a result, simpler psychophysics such as Maximum
Differentiation [Wang&Simoncelli J.Vis 08, Malo&Simoncelli SPIE 15] or fitting
massive image quality databases [Watson&Malo IEEE ICIP 02, Laparra&Malo
JOSA 10] have emerged as alternatives the traditional methods in visualneuroscience. On the other hand, statistical learning leads to systems that
display distinctly non-human errors as illustrated by adversarial examples[Szegedy et al. ICLR 13], show substantial bias from human behavior [Gheiros
et al. ICLR 19], and its eventual human-like response strongly depends on thearchitecture for the same goal [Gomez-Villa et al. Vis. Res. 20, Li et al. J.Vis.
22]. As a result, one may wonder if the models obtained from these alternative
methods (non-classical psychophysics vs statistical learning) actually reproduce
basic visual psychophysics. In this talk I present a decalogue based on classicalpsychophysics to check the human nature of artificial networks. This decalogue
is inspired by the factors that determine successful subjective distortion metrics.
The considered visual effects are so strong that accurate observation control
and calibration are not required. Specifically, the decalogue consists of several
series of visual stimuli and the associated qualitative responses. Given thecompelling nature of the effects, the trends of the responses can be confirmedby plain inspection of the stimuli (even by non-expert viewers). Therefore, thisdecalogue can be considered as a basic set of facts that should be reproducedby models that claim to describe human vision.
More info (and links) at https://isp.uv.es/docs/Malo_talk_CIP2022.pdf
S1.2

Title: "Learning to see Stuff: Unsupervised models of material perception"
Author: Katherine R. Storrs1,2 & Roland W. Fleming1,2Affiliations: (1) Justus Liebig University Giessen, Germany; (2) Center for Mind,
Brain and Behavior (CMBB), University of Marburg and Justus Liebig University
Giessen, Germany
Abstract: How does the brain learn to see properties of the world—like theglossiness of a surface—that cannot be measured by any other senses? Recent
advances in unsupervised deep learning provide us with unprecedentedly
powerful statistical learning systems, which may help shed light on how brains
learn from their visual experience. I will discuss two projects in which we probe
the visual representations learned by unsupervised deep neural networks
trained on artificial environments. In one project, we train a convolutional
PixelVAE network to model the pixel statistics in 10,000 static images of bumpy
surfaces that have different shapes, materials and lighting. In another, we traina recurrent convolutional PredRNN network to predict the next frame in 10,000
video clips of moving objects with different shapes, materials, lighting andtrajectories. In both cases, the models spontaneously come to encode thosefactors in their internal representations, providing a proof-of-principle for how
knowledge about the outside world can be learned from visual experience alone.
Most strikingly, the models make patterns of errors in their perception of material
that follow, on an image-by-image basis, the patterns of errors made by humanobservers. The network trained on static images shows human-like failures ofperceptual gloss constancy, and the network trained on moving videos learns a
representation of material that combines both static and motion cues in humanlike ways. Unsupervised deep learning may provide a coherent framework forhow many perceptual dimensions form, in material perception and beyond.

S1.3

Title: "Leveraging a massive fMRI data set and deep learning to synthesize
images preferred by functional brain areas"
Author: K. Seeliger1, J. Roth, T. Schmid1, M. Hebart2
Affiliations: (1) Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences;(2) J. Roth, T. Schmid: Leipzig University
Abstract: One major goal in vision neuroscience is characterizing the responsesof higher order functional regions in the visual system. As visual computations
are complex and grounded, it is likely that underlying their semantic selectivity(e.g. places, faces, objects, body parts) there exists a composite of imagecomputable features, and that these could be activated selectively. Exhaustively
characterizing this composite experimentally would require showing massive
amounts of stimuli; which - due to the variety of the visual world - is impossible
in-vivo. An alternative approach would be deriving computational models fromneuroimaging data and probing them as in-silico models with neural network
sensitivity methods. This avenue now exists through convolutional neuralnetwork models of the visual system and is currently being explored. The directroute to brain-like in-silico models would be training them end-to-end on massive
amounts of neuroimaging data. Using a large-scale functional MRI dataset
where naturalistic videos were shown, we derived such a model of the visualsystem. To identify the preferred stimuli of voxels and regions, we used a neuralnetwork interpretability technique, based on a generative adversarial neuralnetwork (GAN) for synthesizing preferred images. The higher order areas in ourmodel showed expected (e.g. faces and low spatial frequencies in FFA, places
and high spatial frequencies in PPA) but also unexpected behavior. Preferred
images for each investigated region were localized in highly distinct regions of

the GAN latent space. This approach may reveal previously unknown functional
selectivity in visual cortex.
S1.4

Title: "Measuring sensitivity of deep networks in low-level vision"
Author: Arash Akbarinia
Affiliations: Justus-Liebig Universität Giessen
Abstract: Signal detection, the ability to differentiate between two stimuli or a
stimulus and background, is extensively studied in experimental psychology to
precisely measure the limits of our sensations and perception. Here, I will
discuss the same concept in modern deep neural networks. Thanks to their
human-level performance, these models are ubiquitously explored as a tool tounderstand perception. I will focus on the visual domain covering several typesof networks, such as Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN), Vision
Transformers (ViT) and Variational Autoencoders (VAE). I will present the resultsof two projects where we compared the sensitivity of the human visual system
to deep networks with the same paradigms. In one project, we measured thecontrast sensitivity function (CSF) in deep networks. CSF is a fundamental
signature of the visual system by defining the visibility threshold across all spatial
frequencies. The results show that human-like CSF emerges in deep networks
trained to perform high-level visual tasks. Our analysis indicates the inverted Ushape of CSF is directly utilised in the network’s performance. In the otherproject, we measured the chromatic discrimination threshold in deep networks
and compared it to our colour vision. Similar to our visual system, deep networks
trained on natural images become more sensitive to hue than saturation.
Furthermore, the reported asymmetry in human colour discrimination also
emerges in these networks. Altogether, these results suggest insights into lowlevel visual processing can be acquired by studying deep neural networks.

S2.1

Title: “Compensating the effects of individual differences in colour vision:
potential uses and limitations of Daltonization methods”
Authors: Julio Lillo1, Leticia Álvaro2, Humberto Moreira1,3, Leyla Quispe1 &Laura Abad1
Affiliations: (1) Departamento de Psicología Social, del Trabajo y Diferencial,
Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain; (2)Departamento de Psicología Experimental, Procesos Cognitivos y Logopedia,
Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain; (3)División de Psicología, C. E. S. Cardenal Cisneros, Madrid, Spain
Abstract: Main perceptual-cognitive limitations of CDOs (Colour Deficient
Observers) are analysed, along with the uses and limitations of the tools thattransform images so that CDOs can use them as CNOs (Colour Normal
Observers): the so called daltonization tools. Our analysis is focused on daltonic
people, including the most common CDO types (protanopia, deuteranopia,
protanomaly and deuteranomaly). We begin pointing to the main cause of colour
vision individual differences and of the CDOs problems to perform tasks basedon colour: the existence of pseudoisochromatic stimuli and the corresponding
colour space volume reduction. It is showed how this fact affects every one of
the four colour uses included in the Chaparro and Chaparro tasks taxonomy. It
is emphasised that three of these uses (denotative, connotative and aesthetic)
are related to colour categories and not to specific colours. The last CIE(Commission Internationale de L’Eclairage) technical report on the“enhancement of images for colour-deficient observers” is used with two different
goals. First, to divide daltonization methods into three different types (recoloring,edge enhancement and pattern superposition) considering how they transformoriginal images to facilitate CDO use. Second, to show different ways to test
daltonization accuracy. It is concluded that the choice of a daltonization tool
requires considering, for every specific situation, both the kind of image, the color
use required, and the individual characteristics of the CDOs. Simple images,
such as “document images”, and simple uses, like denotative use, makedaltonised images provided by simple daltonization tools adequate for very

different types of CDO, so these images can be used to promote universal
design (transformed images valid for different users). At the other extreme,
images with many stimuli differences and/or sophisticated uses of colour makedaltonizations valid only for some kinds of CDO (due to individual differences)
and are more difficult to use
S2.2

Title: “Factor analysis of individual differences reveals two temporal- frequency
mechanisms in frontoparallel cyclopean motion”
Authors: Ichasus Llamas-Cornejo1, María Olivares-Fernández1, DavidPeterzell3 & Ignacio Serrano-Pedraza1,3Affiliations: (1) Department of Experimental Psychology. Complutense
University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain; (2) Center for Behaviour and Evolution,
Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK; (3) Fielding Graduate
University, Santa Barbara, California, and National University (JFK), PleasantHill, California, USA
Abstract: The study of the underlying mechanisms in stereovision is mainly
limited to static stereopsis (Howard & Rogers, 2012). Masking experiments andfactor analytic techniques, using sinusoidal depth corrugations, have suggested
the existence of more than two spatial-frequency disparity mechanisms(Serrano-Pedraza et al., 2013,JoV; Peterzell, et al., 2017,VR). Here, using
individual differences, we want to investigate the possible existence ofindependent temporal-frequency disparity mechanisms in frontoparallel
cyclopean motion. Cyclopean motion was constructed using sinusoidal disparity
corrugations obtained with random gaussian-dots stereograms that changed
every frame at 120Hz (no luminance motion was present monocularly, only thesinusoidal corrugation was moved). In total we tested 34 participants. We
measured disparity thresholds for detecting the correct direction of motion ofhorizontal (left-right) and vertical (up-down) sinusoidal corrugations of 0.4 c/deg
drifting at 0.25,0.5,1,2,4,6, and 8Hz. Results show a mild orientation anisotropy
with higher thresholds for vertical corrugations. Disparity thresholds as a functionof temporal frequency are almost constant from 0.25 up to 1c/deg and then they
increase monotonically. Principal component analysis uncovered two factorsthat accounted for 72% of the variability. Varimax rotation showed that one
component loaded from 0.25 to 2Hz and a second component from 4 to 8Hz.
Direct Oblimin rotation indicates a moderate intercorrelation of both components.
Our results suggest the existence of two moderately interdependent temporalfrequency mechanisms in cyclopean motion (slow and fast) like those found in
the luminance domain suggesting a similar low-level motion mechanism for bothtypes of motion.
Acknowledgements: Supported by grant PGC2018-093406-B-I00 from
Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (Spain) to ISP.

S2.3

Title: “Metacognition about the use of Basic Colour Terms in Red-Green
Dichromats” Authors: Humberto Moreira1,2, Julio Lillo1, Leticia Álvaro3, María
Sánchez1 & Ricardo Arancón1
Affiliations: (1) Departamento de Psicología Social, del Trabajo y Diferencial,
Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain; (2)División de Psicología, C. E. S. Cardenal Cisneros, Madrid, Spain; (3)Departamento de Psicología Experimental, Procesos Cognitivos y Logopedia,
Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
Abstract: Normal trichromats have three types of cones in their retinas: L, M
and S cones. Red-Green (R-G) dichromats lack L cones (protanopes) or M
cones (deuteranopes). The results obtained in two different experiments wereused to compare R-G dichromats’ empirical and metacognized abilities todiscriminate basic color categories (BCCs) and to use the corresponding basic
color terms (BCTs). A first experiment used a 102-related-colors set in a colourcategorization task to identify all the stimuli that could be named with each BCT
by each R-G dichromat type (8 protanopes and 9 deuteranopes). In a second

experiment, a group of R-G dichromats (15 protanopes and 16 deuteranopes)
estimated their difficulty discriminating BCCs-BCTs pairs in a verbal task. Strong
coincidences were found between the results derived from both tasks, indicatingthat R-G dichromats have very accurate metacognition about their capacities
and limitations in the use of BCTs. Multidimensional scaling (MDS) solutions
derived from the confusion matrices obtained in both tasks were very similar:
BCTs in R-G dichromats were properly represented in 2D MDS solutions thatclearly reveal one chromatic dimension and one achromatic dimension.
Important concordances were found between protanopes and deuteranopes.
None of these dichromats showed substantial difficulty discriminating the RedGreen pair. The metacognition about the use of BCTs in R-G dichromats can beconsidered a “caricature” of their empirical difficulties. This caricature omits
some difficulties including their problems differentiating “white” and “black” fromother BCTs, while they overestimate their limitations in differentiating the mostdifficult pairs. Individual differences scaling (INDSCAL) analyses indicated thatthe metacognition regarding the use of BCTs in R-G dichromats, especiallydeuteranopes, is driven slightly more by the chromatic dimension and driven
slightly less by the achromatic dimension, than their empirical use of BCTs.
S3.1

Title: “Reduced serial dependence suggests deficits in synaptic potentiation inanti-NMDAR encephalitis and schizophrenia”
Authors: Heike Stein, Joao Barbosa, Mireia Rosa-Justicia, Laia Prades, Alba
Morató, Adrià Galan-Gadea, Helena Ariño, Eugenia Martinez-Hernandez,
Josefina Castro-Fornieles, Josep Dalmau, Albert Compte
Affiliations: (1) Group for Neural Theory, Départament d’ Etudes Cognitives, (2)Institut d’Investigacions Biomèdiques August Pi i Sunyer (IDIBAPS), (3)Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychology, 2017SGR881,
CIBERSAM, Institute Clinic of Neurosciences, Hospital Clínic, (4) Department ofMedicine, University of Barcelona (5) Department of Neurology, University ofPennsylvania
Abstract: The NMDA receptor (NMDAR) subserves memory mechanisms atseveral timescales, including sustained delay activity and different temporalcomponents of synaptic potentiation. We investigated behavioral andelectrophysiological working memory alterations in a delayed response task in two
diseases linked to hypofunctional NMDARs: schizophrenia and autoimmune antiNMDAR encephalitis. We report a markedly reduced influence of previous stimuli on
to-be-remembered working memory contents, while memory accuracy waspreserved. Moreover, decoding analyses showed a limited influence of memory
codes from previous on subsequent trials in patients' EEG. In spiking network
simulations of our memory task, we conclude that changes in cortical excitationstrongly affect memory performance and cannot account for disrupted between-trial
interference. In contrast, our modeling supports alterations in NMDAR-dependent
memory mechanisms operating on longer timescales, such as short-term
potentiation.

S3.2

Title: “Disentangling altered sensory perception in migraine”
Authors: Nara Ikumi, Xim Cerdà Company, Angela Martí Marca, Adrià Vilà
Batlló, Victor J Gallardo, Anna De la Torre Suñe, Edoardo Caronna, Alicia
Alpuente, Patricia Pozo Rosich
Affiliations: (1) Vall d'Hebron Institut de Recerca, Medicine department. (2)Headache and Neurological Pain Research Group (2) Vall d'Hebron University
Hospital, Neurology Department. Headache Unit
Abstract: Migraine is characterized by the presence of recurrent andunpredictable attacks of headache and accompanying sensory symptoms suchas decreased tolerance to light (photophobia), sound (phonophobia), and odors(osmophobia). Phonophobia is present in 70-80% of patients. However, paststudies have only employed one method (method of limits) to determine soundaversion thresholds. Here, we will present two studies that aim to disentangle
potential effects of protective behavior, sensory/decision processes, andintensity of pain in the estimation of these thresholds. Our results will give insightto the potential integrative mechanism which drives this altered sensory
perception, and findings could also be translated to other disorders where
sensory thresholds need to be studied.
S3.3

Title: “Motion sensitivity and spatial suppression in psychosis and anti-NMDAR
encephalitis”
Authors: Daniel Linares, Francina Badia, Mireia Rosa-Justicia, Laia Prades,
Josefina Castro-Fornieles, Josep Dalmau, Gisela Sugranyes, Albert Compte
Affiliations: (1) University of Barcelona (2) Institut d’Investigacions
Biomèdiques August Pi i Sunyer (IDIBAPS), (2) Department of Child andAdolescent Psychiatry and Psychology, 2017SGR881, CIBERSAM, Institute
Clinic of Neurosciences, Hospital Clínic, (3) Department of Neurology, Universityof Pennsylvania
Abstract: Motion perception is altered in schizophrenia: sensitivity and spatial
suppression are reduced. It is unclear, however, which is the contribution of nonperceptual factors to the alterations. Also, as previous studies are conducted on
chronic patients, it is unclear whether the alterations are caused by the etiologyof the disease or by factors associated with its chronicity. Finally, it is unclear
whether a hypofunction of the NMDA receptors—which plays a fundamental rolein the pathogenesis of the disease— mediates the alterations. To assess thesequestions, we measured motion perception sensitivity as a function of the size
and the contrast of the stimuli in patients with schizophrenia, patients that havesuffered a first episode of psychosis, patients with anti-NMDAR encephalitis, andhealthy controls. We found a reduced sensitivity and spatial suppression in thethree groups of patients controlling for lapses, which suggests that theperceptual alterations are due to the etiology of psychosis and are mediated bya hypofunction of the NMDAR receptors.

S4.1

Title: “Sensory liking”
Author: Martin Skov
Affiliations: (1) Danish Research Center for Magnetic Resonance, Centre for
Functional and Diagnostic Imaging and Research, Copenhagen University
Hospital - Amager and Hvidovre, and (2) Center for Decision Neuroscience,
Copenhagen Business School, Denmark
Abstract: Historically, sensory liking has been investigated as a fixed reaction
to the perceptual properties of physical objects. In order to determine what
humans and other species like, experimenters have manipulated properties of astimulus and measured liking responses to them, either in the form of choice
behavior or self-reported ratings. The hope of this research has been to discoverstimulus-preference laws that explain why organisms like certain sensory objects
and dislike others. Unfortunately, this body of work has revealed that individuals
often respond differently to the same stimulus in different evaluative contexts:
sensory liking is not fixed but rather variable. This ubiquitous finding has led toa search for possible reasons why individuals might "deviate" from a stimuluspreference law, including personality differences, experience, or knowledge.
Here, I want to defend a view of sensory liking that accounts for the inherent
variability of sensoy liking by giving up on the assumption that hedonic liking
arises as a fixed reaction to a given stimulus. Instead, I will argue, liking
outcomes emerge as a function of the organism's contextual physiological andbehavioral needs rather than the stimulus alone. How pleasant a stimulus isdepends on, amongst other factors, how rewarding it is expected to be, theorganism's homeostatic state, and the behavioral tasks the organism is engaged
in. In this sense, sensory liking is not a reaction to the inherent value of astimulus, but rather an answer to the biological question of what value a given
stimulus represents in the context of the organism's current survival needs.

S4.2

Title: “The embodied neuroaesthetics of dance”
Author: Emily S. CrossAffiliations: Centre for Social, Cognitive & Affective Neuroscience, School of
Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Glasgow, UK
Abstract: Perceiving others in action, whether in everyday contexts, such as
seeing a commuter run to catch a train, or in highly refined artistic settings, suchas watching a skilled dancer perform on stage, evokes automatic affective
responses in an observer. The extent to which an observer’s prior experience
with an observed action shapes his or her affective evaluation remains poorly
understood. Better understanding of this relationship is essential for advancing
knowledge about the role of pleasure in perception in general, and in artistic andaesthetic contexts spanning the performance arts in particular. In my remarks, I
will discuss research that attempts to construct a more complete understandingof the impact of experience on emotional responses and aesthetic judgements
when watching others dance. My team studies the execution and observation ofcomplex, whole-body dance movements, using complementary behavioural andbrain-based approaches, such as training interventions, functional neuroimaging
and physiological measures of implicit affective responses. Findings from ourwork offer some suggestions for why we have evolved to derive such intense
pleasure from watching others dance.
S4.3

Title: “Sensorimotor impact on pleasure, emotion and aesthetics in theperception of dance”
Author: Beatriz Calvo-Merino
Affiliations: Department of Psychology, City University of London, UK
Abstract: This talk explores how different cognitive and neural mechanisms that
contribute to emotion perception and aesthetic experience, engage in a similarmanner with sensorimotor representations during dance observation. We revise
evidence from work focused on the sensorimotor expertise of expert dancers.
We explore how dance expertise modulates visual, sensorimotor andpsychophysiological responses to affective body movements. And we further
explore how this enhanced expert emotion sensitivity is domain-specific or
general to other forms of emotional expression. We propose dance experts show
an enhanced general emotion sensitivity beyond the observation of their motor
acquired skill but onto general and everyday emotional expressions. We also
revise work on dance observation by naïve observers (non-dancers) andsuggest that similar sensorimotor recruitment participates in aesthetic andemotion perception of dance. We discuss venues for emotional sensitivity
training based on engaging motor and artistic knowledge.

S4.4

Title: “Musical Pleasure and the Paradox of Negative Emotions”
Author: David Huron
Affiliations: (1) School of Music & Center for Cognitive and Brain Sciences,
Ohio State University, USA
Abstract: How is it that (some) listeners can enjoy nominally sad music? And
how is it that (some) listeners can enjoy nominally aggressive musics--like Heavy
Metal? In this brief presentation I review two theories that endeavor to accountfor the pleasure of musics that are ostensibly associated with negativelyvalenced emotions.

S4.5

Title: “Exploring the interplay between perceptual and reward networks in theability to experience pleasure from music”
Author: Josep Marco-Pallarés
Affiliations: (1) Department of Cognition, Development and Educational
Psychology, Institute of Neurosciences, University of Barcelona, (2) Cognition
and Brain Plasticity Unit, Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL),
Spain
Abstract: Most of the reinforcing stimuli for animals are related to aspects
relevant to survival or means to achieve them. Humans, however, are moved bya wider range of rewarding stimuli that may not be directly associated with
Darwinian survival imperatives. Among these, music is particularly relevant, as

it is present in all known cultures and is one of the most pleasant stimuli for mostpeople. Therefore, an intriguing question is how an abstract sound might
become pleasant and what are the underlying brain mechanisms explaining
such processing. In the present talk we will present the brain networks involvedin musical pleasure. In addition, we will also address the key role of the dynamics
between perceptual and reward areas that allow giving value to music. Finally,
we will explore how these mechanisms are impaired in healthy people who do
not enjoy music, a condition known as specific musical anhedonia.
S5.1

Title: “Home-based enriched Music-supported Therapy in the rehabilitation of
upper limb motor functions for patients with chronic stroke”
Authors: Emma Segura1,2, Jennifer Grau-Sánchez1,2,3, David SanchezPinsach4, Myriam De la Cruz-Puebla2,5,6,7, Esther Duarte8,9, Josep Lluis Arcos4,
and Antoni Rodríguez-Fornells1,2,9
Affiliations: (1) Department of Cognition, Development and Educational
Psychology, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain; (2) Cognition and Brain
Plasticity Unit, Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute, Barcelona, Spain; (3)Escola Universitària d'Infermeria i Teràpia Ocupacional, Autonomous Universityof Barcelona, Terrassa, Barcelona, Spain; (4) Artificial Intelligence ResearchInstitute, Spanish National Research Council, Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain; (5)Department of Equity in Brain Health, Global Brain Health Institute (GBHI),
University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), California, USA; (6) Department
of Cellular Biology, Physiology and Inmunology, Neuroscience Institute,
Autonomous University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain; (7) Department ofInternal Medicine, Health Sciences Faculty, Technical University of Ambato,
Tungurahua, Ecuador; (8) Department of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine,
Hospital de l'Esperança, Barcelona, Spain; (9) Institut Hospital del Mar
d'Investigacions Mèdiques (IMIM), Barcelona, Spain; jInstitució Catalana deRecerca i Estudis Avançats, Barcelona, Spain
Abstract: Musical activities provide a multimodal experience that requires thesimultaneous activation of different brain areas involved in sensory-motor
function, auditory processing, emotional processing, and cognitive functions
such as memory and attention. Music-supported Therapy (MST) is aneurorehabilitation technique based on this framework which consists of playing
music instruments with the paretic upper limb to improve fine and gross motor
functions post stroke. MST can improve motor and cognitive functions as well as
quality of life (QoL) in subacute and chronic stroke patients. Most stroke patients
do not achieve full upper limb motor function recovery after completing formal
rehabilitation programs. We designed a home-based enriched MST program(eMST) to provide them with the opportunity of continuing rehabilitation bythemselves in the chronic phase of the disease. The eMST aims to improve
upper limb motor function through musical training. The intervention combines
self-training and group sessions in order to promote autonomy, motivation andsocial interaction, crucial elements for motor recovery. We developed an app to
conduct the sessions at home with a MIDI-piano and percussion instruments. A
randomized controlled trial is being conducted to test the efficacy of the eMST
in improving motor and cognitive functions as well as QoL of chronic stroke
patients. Participants are evaluated pre- and post- intervention, as well as 3months later. We expect to observe a significant recovery in upper limb motorand cognitive functions, as well as an improvement in the QoL of patients
undergoing the eMST intervention in comparison to those undergoing a
conventional home-based motor intervention

S5.2

Title: “Using interactive movement sonification to alter body perception andsupport physical activity in physically inactive adults”
Authors: Judith Ley-Flores
Affiliations: DEI Interactive Systems Group, Computer Science andEngineering Department, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain.

Abstract: Physical inactivity is a serious health problem. It is linked to negative
body perceptions, including negative perceptions of physical capabilities, which
act as psychological barriers to perform physical activity (PA). Here, I will show
the use of a technique, called interactive movement sonification, which employs
real-time sound feedback produced by body movement to tackle bottom-up
sensorimotor mechanisms related to body perception, to ultimately address
psychological barriers to PA. I will present different studies that are part of my
PhD thesis in which we used two different interactive prototype systems(SoniShoes and Soniband), designed to modulate body perception, emotional
state, and movement behavior through movement sonification. Results from ourquantitative studies with users showed effects of particular movement-soundmappings on body feelings (e.g., feeling lighter), feelings about the movement(e.g., control over the movement), and emotional feelings (e.g., having more
motivation to complete the exercise, or feeling happier) during PA. Results also
showed sound effects on actual movement behavior (e.g., acceleration) and on
proprioceptive awareness. Two qualitative studies were also run withparticipants using SoniBand during several days in laboratory and homecontexts. The results revealed specific connections between properties of the
movement sonifications (e.g., gradual changes of frequencies); particular bodyfeelings (e.g., feeling strong), and aspects of PA (e.g., movement repetitions).
The effects of movement sonification seem to be related to the PA-level of the
populations. The presented studies have implications for potential interventions
and applications supporting PA and open opportunities for future research
investigating the use of interactive movement sonification for neurorehabilitation.
S5.3

Title: “Impact of virtual embodiment on motor resonance after a Mirror-PAS
protocol”
Authors: Francesca Frisco1,2, Marta Matamala-Gomez2,3, Giacomo Guidali4,
Carlotta Lega1,2, Nadia Bolognini1, Angelo Maravita1,2.
Affiliations: (1) Psychology Department, University of Milano-Bicocca, piazza
dell’Ateneo Nuovo, 1, 20126 Milan, Italy. (2) Mind and Behavior TechnologicalCenter (MIBTEC), University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy (3) Brainvitge
Cognition and Brain Plasticity. Dept. of Cognition, Development and Education
Psychology. University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain. (4) Neurophysiology
Lab, IRCCS Istituto Centro San Giovanni di Dio Fatebenefratelli, Brescia, Italy
Abstract: The Mirror Neuron System (MNS) is endowed with an actionobservation network whereby the movement observation leads to greater
excitability of the primary motor area (M1) (motor resonance) [1]. The activity in
MNS seems to be modulated by learning new visuo-motor associations, i.e.,
Hebbian associative plasticity. A method to induce such plasticity and reshape
motor resonance is the so-called mirror Paired Associative Stimulation (PAS)
protocol, in which a transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) pulse over the M1
is paired to a visual stimulus showing ipsilateral hand movements [2]. Further,observing virtual movements while being embodied in a virtual body impacts
motor learning [3]. Here, we carried out a mirror-PAS protocol in immersive
virtual reality (VR) (i.e., Head Mounted Display) to investigate the impact of body
representation on motor resonance when observing a grasping movement froma first-person perspective (1PP) while being embodied in a virtual body. A control
group observed the same movement from a 1PP in a non-immersive setting (i.e.,
computer monitor). During the virtual mirror-PAS, a single-pulse TMS wasapplied over the right M1 paired to the observation of an ipsilateral grasping
movement. Moreover, we recorded Motor Evoked Potentials induced by singlepulse TMS over the right M1 during the observation of grasping movements
made with both hands. Following the virtual mirror-PAS protocol, we founddifferences between groups in motor resonance, sense of ownership, andagency toward the virtual arm performing the grasping movement. These results
show the pivotal role of virtual embodiment in modulating the mirror-PAS's
effects on corticomotor excitability.

[1] Rizzolatti G, Sinigaglia C. The mirror mechanism: a basic principle of brain
function. Nat Rev Neurosci 2016;17:757e65. https://doi.org/10.1038/
nrn.2016.135[2] Guidali, G., Carneiro, M. I. S., & Bolognini, N. (2020). Paired Associative
Stimulation drives the emergence of motor resonance. Brain Stimulation, 13(3),627–636.
[3] Matamala-Gomez, M., Slater, M., & Sanchez-Vives, M. V. (2022). Impact ofvirtual embodiment and exercises on functional ability and range of motion inorthopedic rehabilitation. Scientific Reports, 12(1), 1-10.
S5.4

Title: “Effects of multisensory audio-visual stimulation for the rehabilitation of
unilateral spatial neglect”
Authors: Luca Zigiotto1, 2, Alessio Damora3, Federica Albini4, 5, Carlotta Casati4,
6, Gessica Scrocco3, 4, Mauro Mancuso3, 7, Luigi Tesio8, 9, Giuseppe Vallar4, 6,
Nadia Bolognini4, 6
Affiliations: (1) Division of Neurosurgery, Santa Chiara Hospital, Azienda
Provinciale per I Servizi Sanitari (APSS), Trento, Italy; (2) Division of
Psychology, Santa Chiara Hospital, Azienda Provinciale per I Servizi Sanitari(APSS), Trento, Italy; (3) Tuscany Rehabilitation Clinic, Arezzo, Italy; (4)Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy; (5) Clinical
Neuropsychology Unit, Rehabilitation Department, S. Antonio Abate Hospital,
Gallarate, Varese, Italy; (6) Laboratory of Neuropsychology, Istituto Auxologico
Italiano, IRCCS, Milan, Italy; (7) Physical and Rehabilitative Medicine Unit, NHSSouth-Est Tuscany, Italy; (8) Department of Neurorehabilitation Sciences,
Istituto Auxologico Italiano, IRCCS, Milan, Italy; (9) Department of Biomedical
Sciences for Health, University of Milan, Italy
Abstract: Unilateral spatial neglect (USN) is a neuropsychological syndrome,
usually caused by right-hemisphere lesions. Brain-damaged patients with USN
fail to orient towards and respond to events occurring in the left (contralesional)
side of space. Multisensory integration mechanisms may be largely spared in
USN patients; hence they may help in the modulation of spatial orienting. This
study aims to develop a new rehabilitation procedure for USN based on
Multisensory audio-visual Stimulation (MS): the effects of this stimulation wascompared to that of a highly effective treatment for USN, Prismatic Adaptation(PA). Twenty USN stroke patients were divided in two groups (10 per group) andreceived a 2-week treatment (20 sessions, twice per day) of MS or PA. The
effects of MS and PA were assessed by a set of neuropsychological tests widelyused in the clinical practice for the diagnosis of USN: target cancellation, line
bisection, sentence reading, personal neglect and complex drawing; moreover,the functional disability in the activities of daily living was assessed using theCatherine Bergego Scale. Results showed that MS brought to improvements in
USN, which were comparable than those induced by PA; in addiction, personal
neglect was improved only by MS, not by PA. Improvements remained stable atleast for one month after the end of both treatments and were unrelated toduration of disease and extent of cerebral lesion. In conclusion, MS represents
a novel and promising rehabilitation procedure for USN.

Regular Talks

T01

Title: “The strength of the interaction between fine and coarse scales isunaffected under monocular viewing”
Authors: Sandra Arranz-Paraíso1, Francisco Prados-Rodríguez1 & Ignacio
Serrano-Pedraza1,2Affiliations: (1) Department of Experimental Psychology. Complutense
University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain; (2) Center for Behaviour and Evolution,
Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UKAbstract: As psychophysical research has shown, certain motion discrimination
impairments can be explained by two inhibitory mechanisms: surroundsuppression and the interaction between motion sensors tuned to fine andcoarse scales (Serrano-Pedraza et al., 2013). When a static low spatialfrequency component is added to a moving high-spatial-frequency component,
motion discrimination is impaired (Derrington & Henning, 1987). Surroundsuppression emerges when stimulus size and contrast increase (Tadin et al.,2003) and is reduced under monocular viewing (Arranz-Paraiso et al., 2021).
However, little is known about what occurs in the interaction between fine andcoarse scales under the monocular viewing condition. We measured theduration thresholds of fifteen participants in a motion discrimination task underbinocular and monocular (right/left eye) viewing conditions. The stimuli werevertical Gabor patches of frequencies 1 and 3c/deg, 46% contrast, 3deg
diameter, drifting at 2deg/sec. Four conditions were tested: 1c/deg moving
added to a 3c/deg static (1m+3s), 1c/deg static added to a 3c/deg moving(1s+3m), 1c/deg moving and 3c/deg moving. The strength of the interaction wasmeasured with an interaction index, subtracting the duration thresholds, inlogarithmic units, of the complex minus the simple stimulus. As in previous
research, duration thresholds were higher in the 1s+3m condition, showing
impairment in motion direction discrimination. Our results show that the strengthof the interaction between fine and coarse scales is unaffected under monocular
viewing suggesting different underlying mechanisms for surround suppression
and for the interaction between scales.
Acknowledgements: Supported by Grant No. PGC2018-093406-B-I00 to ISP
from Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades, Spain
T02

Title: “Measuring the interaction between coarse and fine moving scales at long
durations, different sizes, and viewing conditions”
Authors: Omar Bachtoula1, Juan Molinero-Solla1 & Ignacio Serrano-Pedraza1,2Affiliations: (1) Department of Experimental Psychology, Complutense
University of Madrid, Madrid, 28223, Spain; (2) Centre for Behaviour and
Evolution, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE2 4HH, UK
Abstract: The combination of a static low frequency patch with a moving highfrequency component, at short durations, originates an illusion where thephysical motion is perceived in the opposite direction, and is unaffected bybinocular, monocular, or dichoptic presentations (Derrington et al., 1993). This
impairment in motion perception was also obtained at long durations using a
flickering low frequency patch (Serrano-Pedraza et al., 2007). Serrano-Pedraza& Derrington (2010) showed that, at short durations, this interaction becomes
more intense depending on stimulus size. Here, we wanted to explore thisinteraction for long durations using three viewing conditions (dichoptic,
monocular, and binocular), and two stimulus sizes (3 and 7 deg). The stimuli
consisted of vertical Gabor patches composed of a flickering low frequency
component and a drifting high frequency component. We determined thestrength of the interaction by means of the contrast level of the flickering
component that cancelled motion direction discrimination. Results were similar
for both sizes, suggesting that the strength of the interaction is not affected by
the sizes of the stimulus tested. Interestingly, binocular and monocularpresentations generated a strong interaction, while the interaction under
dichoptic viewing produced a weak effect. This finding suggests that there is a
critical duration to trigger the interaction between low and high spatial
frequencies under dichoptic presentations.
Acknowledgements: Supported by grant PGC2018-093406-B-I00 from
Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (Spain) to ISP.

T03

Title: “Basic psychophysics of deep networks trained for image segmentation”
Authors: P. Hernández-Cámara, J. Vila-Tomás, Q. Li, V. Laparra and J. Malo
Affiliations: Image Processing Lab (IPL). Universitat de València

Abstract: Current deep architectures are easy to train according to different
functional goals. As a result, deep learning using biologically plausible objectives
is becoming a standard tool in theoretical visual neuroscience. For example,
direct learning of the input-output physiological responses [Burg et al. PLOS 21]
is complemented with explanations of physiological responses of classification
networks (high-level goal) [Cadena et al. PLOS 19], or with explanations of
psychophysical trends of autoencoder networks (low-level goal) [Hepburn et al.
ICLR 22, Gomez-Villa et al. Vis. Res. 20, Li et al. J.Vis. 22]. Classification andoptimal reconstruction are biologically sensible tasks but the analysis of these
networks as biological vision models is problematic. On one hand, classification
implies generating a global image label so abstract visual information is spreadin unclear ways. This implies complicated read-out schemes to relateclassification networks and biological vision. On the other hand, autoencoders
with different constraints are so low-level and dependent on the architecture thatthey may be appropriate only to model very early vision stages. Segmentation
lies between the high and low-level problems represented by classification nets
and autoencoders. It identifies classes but also generates coherent masks in thespatial domain. Here we study the psychophysical behaviour of a successful
semantic segmentation network. Our model extends conventional U-net
architectures by using biologically inspired divisive normalization stages, which
certainly contribute to substantial improvements [Hernandez-Camara et al. IEEEICIP 22]. However, the use of perceptually inspired nonlinearities and a task that
may be biologically sensible do not guarantee a human-like behaviour of the net.
In order to explore the eventual similarity of U-nets with divisive normalizationand human vision, here we check if these nets reproduce a representative
program of classical visual psychophysics [Malo CIP 22].
More info and links at http://isp.uv.es/docs/Hernandez_et_al_CIP_22.pdf
Acknowledgements: This work was partially funded by the EU / Spanish
Government grants MICINN PID2020-118071GBI00 and MICINN PDC2021121522-C21, and by the Generalitat Valenciana grant Grisolía-P/2019/035
T04

Title: “Differences in the use of position and motion information for saccadic andgoal directed actions”
Authors: Cristina de la Malla1 & Alexander Goettker2
Affiliations: (1) Vision and Control of Action (VISCA) Group, Department of
Cognition, Development and Psychology of Education, Institut de Neurociències,
Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain (2) Justus-Liebig
University Giessen, Giessen, Germany
Abstract: Inherent sensorimotor delays require predicting where moving targets
will be in the future to successfully interact with them. These predictions are
based on the combination of position and motion signals. Research using
isoluminant targets has shown that when the computation of motion information
is impaired, saccades are less precise and land at positions where targets were~100 ms before saccade initiation. Here we use targets with first- and secondorder motion to compare the effects that impairing the computation of motion has
on saccades and on hand movements. To do so, participants completed three
conditions where a step-ramp paradigm was used. Target’s steps were of 14 cm
upwards from a fixation point, and ramps were of 5, 10 and 15 cm/s. In one
condition, participants had to make a saccade towards the target and pursue it
accurately. In that case, saccades were more accurate when aiming at first- thanat second-order motion targets. In another condition, participants had to look at
the targets and try to intercept them by tapping on them. Accuracy in saccades
depended on whether the target was defined by first- or second-order motion,
but accuracy in interception was similar in both cases. In another condition,
participants had to try to intercept the target while keeping their gaze at the initial
fixation location. Accuracy in interception was not worse than when looking at
the targets. Our results speak in favour of a difference in the way position andmotion signals are used for gaze and hand movements.

Acknowledgements: This work was supported by grant PID2020-116400GAI00 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 to CM.
T05

Title: “Conflict monitoring and attentional adjustment during binocular rivalry”
Authors: *Alice Drew1, *Mireia Torralba1, Manuela Ruzzoli1,2,3, Luis Morís
Fernández1,4, Alba Sabaté1, Márta Szabina Pápai1, Salvador Soto-Faraco1,5Affiliations: (1) Multisensory Research Group, Centre for Brain and Cognition,
Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain; (2) BCBL, Basque Center on
Cognition, Brain and Language, Donostia-San Sebastian, Spain; (3) Ikerbasque,
Basque Foundation for Science, Bilbao, Spain; (4) Departamento de Psicología
Básica, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain; (5) Institució Catalana
de Recerca i Estudis Avançats (ICREA), Barcelona, Spain
Abstract: To make sense of ambiguous and, at times, fragmentary sensory
input, the brain must rely on a process of active interpretation. At any given
moment, only one of several possible perceptual representations prevails in ourconscious experience. Our hypothesis is that the competition between
alternative representations induces a pattern of neural activation resembling
cognitive conflict, eventually leading to fluctuations between different perceptual
outcomes in the case of steep competition. To test this hypothesis, we probed
changes in perceptual awareness between competing images using binocular
rivalry. We drew our predictions from the conflict monitoring theory, which holds
that cognitive control is invoked by the detection of conflict during information
processing. Our results show that fronto-medial theta oscillations (5–7Hz), an
established electroencephalography (EEG) marker of conflict, increases rightbefore perceptual alternations and decreases thereafter, suggesting that conflictmonitoring occurs during perceptual competition. Furthermore, to investigate
conflict resolution via attentional engagement, we looked for a neural marker ofperceptual switches as by parieto-occipital alpha oscillations (8–12Hz). The
power of parieto- occipital alpha displayed an inverse pattern to that of frontomedial theta, reflecting periods of high interocular inhibition during stable
perception, and low inhibition around moments of perceptual change. Ourfindings aim to elucidate the relationship between conflict monitoringmechanisms and perceptual awareness.

T06

Title: “Studying error perception in complex scenarios stresses the importanceof midfrontal theta during social cognition”
Authors: Teresa Sousa1,3, Camila Dias1,2, João Estiveira1,2, Diana Costa1,2,João Castelhano1,2, Gabriel Pires4,5, Miguel Castelo-Branco1,3Affiliations: (1) Coimbra Institute for Biomedical Imaging and Translational
Research, University of Coimbra; (2) Institute for Nuclear Sciences Applied to
Health, University of Coimbra; (3) Faculty of Medicine, University of Coimbra; (4)Institute of Systems and Robotics, University of Coimbra; (5) Engineering
Department, Polytechnic Institute of Tomar
Abstract: The capacity to voluntarily optimize our responses in changing or
challenging environments is highly dependent on error/performance monitoring.
This is particularly critical during social cognition processing and, whencompromised, contributes to atypical thinking and behavior in several mental
disorders. Oscillations in the theta band over the medial frontal cortex have been
increasingly suggested as a neural index of higher-order control over behavior
and in particular action selection. Nevertheless, the role of theta in thecoordination of goal-directed processes across different brain regions remains
unclear. Here, we investigated how the ongoing midfrontal theta reflects different
aspects of executive function. We started by identifying the neural markers oferror monitoring when performing different responses and using the perceptionof facial cues as instruction. Our data confirm the robustness of midfrontal theta
to study error monitoring in complex scenarios, as it carries information fromlocked and non-phase-locked signals. Importantly, we found action-independent
diminished versus augmented midfrontal theta during pre-error and error
commission. This opposite temporal pattern suggests that high midfrontal theta

levels are related to general cognitive control mechanisms required duringperformance monitoring starting before a response. Source analysis suggests
an origin in distinct regions of the salience network. Therefore, we theninvestigated the effect of task difficulty on the modulation of these core error
monitoring brain regions and communication with others, such as the
dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which is involved in error awareness. Our findings
reinforce the hypothesized role of the salience network as a hub between distinct
neural networks, such as the one involved in cognitive control and thefrontoparietal executive network.
Acknowledgements: This work was supported by the BIAL Foundation (Grant
No. PT/FB/BL-2018-306) and the Portuguese Foundation for Science andTechnology(Grants
No:
PTDC/PSI-GER/30852/2017,
PTDC/EEIAUT/30935/2017, FCT-UID/4950/2020, and UI/BD/150832/2021).
T07

Title: “Using occipital alpha-bursts to modulate behaviour in real-time”
Authors: Irene Vigué-Guix, Salvador Soto-Faraco
Affiliations: Pompeu Fabra University
Abstract: Spontaneous oscillatory neural activity can influence the processingof sensory inputs and subsequent behavioural reactions. Although spontaneous
activity often appears in stochastic bursts, typical approaches in humanneuroimaging are based on trial averages, making it thus nearly impossible toconnect oscillatory bursts to behaviour directly. In order to garner support for the
intrinsic role of the oscillatory bursts in the alpha band (8-13 Hz) in visual
perception, we developed an EEG-based brain-computer interface (BCI) thatallowed for burst-triggered stimulus presentation in real-time while participants
performed a visual speeded detection task. Because of the well-known inhibitory
function of ⍺-activity over sensory cortices, we hypothesised that the occurrenceof alpha bursts at the target onset would impact reaction times (RTs). As
expected, targets presented during alpha-burst episodes led to slower RTs thanthose presented outside. Furthermore, targets presented during bursts weremore likely to be missed, whereas those presented in the absence of bursts led
to false alarms more often. The concluding remarks of our study are threefold:(i) Our findings corroborate both the theories and the empirical evidence on therole of alpha-oscillations in visual perception on a trial-by-trial basis; (ii) it ispossible to modulate behaviour (RTs and errors) using occipital alpha-bursts,
and (iii) real-time BCI systems can be used as a test bench for brain-behaviouraltheories, making them a promising research tool for cognitive neuroscience.
Acknowledgements: This research was supported by the Ministerio de
Economia y Competitividad (PSI2016-75558-P and PID2019-108531GB-I00,
both to S.S.F.).

T08

Title: “Alpha fluctuations regulate the accrual of visual information to awareness”
Authors: Mireia Torralba Cuello1, Alice Drew1, Alba Sabaté San José2, Luis
Morís Fernández1, Salvador Soto-Faraco1,3Affiliations: (1) Multisensory Research Group, Center for Brain and Cognition,
University of Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain; (2) Universitat de Barcelona,
Barcelona, Spain; (3) Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies(ICREA), Barcelona, Spain.
Abstract: Endogenous brain processes play an important role in shaping
perceptual phenomenology caused by sensory input. This is illustrated
dramatically by the alternations experienced when watching ambiguous images,
However the relationship between endogenous states and perceptual
experience is still not well understood. Here, we hypothesised that endogenousalpha fluctuations in the excitability of visual cortex neural populations play a rolein pacing the accumulation of sensory information, leading to the emergence ofspecific perceptual outcomes. We addressed this hypothesis using binocular
rivalry combined with visual entrainment and electroencephalography in humans(N=117, 64 female). Consistent with the hypothesis, the individual frequency ofalpha oscillations in the occipital cortex correlated with perceptual alternation

rates experienced during binocular rivalry. In subsequent experiments we up- or
down-regulated endogenous brain activity via rhythmic visual entrainment, andproduced corresponding changes in perceptual alternation rate. These changes
were observed only in the alpha range but not at lower entrainment frequencies,
and were much reduced when using arrhythmic stimulation. Additionally,
entraining at frequencies above the alpha range did not result in speeding up
perceptual alternation rates. Overall, these findings support the notion that visual
information is accumulated via alpha cycles to promote the emergence of
conscious perceptual representations. We suggest that models of binocular
rivalry incorporating posterior alpha as a pacemaker can provide an important
advance in the comprehension of the dynamics of visual awareness.
Acknowledgements: This research was supported by the Ministerio de Ciencia
e Innovación (PID2019-108531GB-I00 AEI/FEDER), AGAUR Generalitat deCatalunya (2017 SGR 1545). This project has been co-funded with 50% by theEuropean Regional Development Fund under the framework of the FEDER
Operative Programme for Catalunya 2014–2020, with a grant of 1,527,637.88€.
We want to thank Dr. Márta Szabina Pápai and Indre Pileckyte for helping in thepiloting of the Experiments and in EEG data collection.
T09

Title: “Local surround for colour constancy using virtual reality”
Authors: Raquel Gil Rodríguez, Laysa Hedjar, Matteo Toscani, Dar'ya
Guarnera, Giuseppe Claudio Guarnera, Karl R. Gegenfurtner
Affiliations: Justus-Liebig Universität Giessen; Bournemouth University;
Norwegian University of Science and Technology; University of York
Abstract: Virtual reality (VR) allows us to create realistic and immersive
experiments on colour perception. Previous studies showed the possibility ofcolour calibrating the headset mounted display (HMD). Based on that, we utilise
VR to investigate the influence of local surround in a colour constancy
experiment. In our approach, we use a specific rendering software, Unreal
Engine, and HTC Vive Pro Eye for visualisation. We model a photo-realistic
complex outdoor scenario and choose five different illuminations, one neutral
and four chromatic for testing. The object of interest is a small grey lizard placedin a particular location, on the side of a cliff. We have two scenes: 1) the control
and 2) the local surround. In a control condition, all cues to constancy wereavailable. In the latter scenario, we modify the reflectance of the backgroundobject (cliff) to match the reflected colour under the neutral illumination, so it
remains constant under the chromatic illuminants. Under each illuminant, two
lizards pop up with five distinct reflectances (colours under the chromatic
illuminants are chosen to reflect reflectance matches, tristimulus matches, or in
between levels of colour constancy). Participants selected the coloured lizard
closer to achromatic. Results show the colour constancy metrics are lower under
the local surround scenario. This outcome follows previous studies on colour
constancy and emphasises the importance of local information also using virtual
reality.
Acknowledgements: The study was funded by the Deutsche
Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) – project
number 222641018 - SFB/TRR135, TPA8 and C2; and the European ResearchCouncil Advanced Grant `Color3.0' – project number 884116. D. Guarnera and
G. C. Guarnera were supported by the project Spectraskin N-288670, funded by
the Research Council of Norway.

T10

Title: “The influence of different screens and lighting conditions when selecting
the achromatic point in digital images”
Authors: Andreia E. Gomes1, Andreia Ribeiro, Sérgio M.C. Nacimento and JoãoM.M. Linhares
Affiliations: Physics Centre of Minho and Porto Universities (CF-UM-UP),
Gualtar Campus, University of Minho, 4710-057 Braga (Portugal)
Abstract: Color calibration and appropriate ambient lighting conditions areparamount for accurate colored images displayed on screens. Changes to theseconditions will impact the observer’s color perception. Nevertheless, the impact
of changing the screen and ambient lighting conditions when selecting images’
achromatic point is undetermined. The purpose of this work was to assess theinfluence of different screens and lighting conditions on the perceived
achromatic point.
32 observers with normal color vision assessed 8 images across 3 experimental
conditions: laboratory monitor display with lights on (LL) and lights off (LD) andhome screen either with lights on or off (H). The observers’ task was to selectthe achromatic point of each image using a mousepad. Each mousepad position
was correlated to a particular hue and saturation that recolored the image
presented with that specific color. The color of the selected achromatic point wasrecorded in CIELAB color space. Results showed that the selected achromatic
point was not purely achromatic, shifting towards green and blue hues. Averages
estimated across observers found CIE(a*,b*) of (-1.18,0.09), (-1.00,-2.04) and (1.05,0.19) for LL, LD and H conditions, respectively. Statistically significant
differences were only found for b* between no light and lighting conditions.
These results seem to indicate that observers select slightly bluish greenish
points instead of achromatic point. Differences were only found in the bluish hue
but not between LL and H conditions suggesting that the screen does not affectthe selection of the achromatic point on those images.
Acknowledgements: This study was supported by the Portuguese Foundationfor Science and Technology (FCT) under the scope of the strategic funding of
UIDB/04469/2020 and UIDB/04650/2020 and also in the framework of the PhD
scholarship grants SFR/BD/147336/2019 and 2020.05785 BD.
T11

Title: “How universal is preference for curvature? A systematic review and metaanalysis”
Authors: Erick G. Chuquichambi1, Oshin Vartanian2, Martin Skov3,4, Enric
Munar1Affiliations: (1) Human Evolution and Cognition Group (EvoCog), University of
the Balearic Islands Palma de Mallorca, Spain; (2) Department of Psychology,
University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada; (3) Danish Research Centre for
Magnetic Resonance, Copenhagen University Hospital, Kettegaards Alle 30,
DK-2650 Hvidovre, Denmark; (4) Decision Neuroscience Research Cluster,
Copenhagen Business School, Solbjerg Plads 3, DK-2000 Frederiksberg,
Denmark.
Abstract: Visual preference for curvature is widely supported by the Empirical
Aesthetics literature. This effect has been reported using multiple measures,kinds of stimuli, and experimental designs. A few historical and theoreticalreviews on preference for curvature can be found in the scientific literature.
However, less is known about the overall quantitative magnitude of the effect,
and its possible moderator variables. In light of the accumulation of empiricalevidence, we present a pre-registered systematic review and meta-analysis ofvisual preference for curvature that quantifies its magnitude, and synthesizes thefactors moderating this effect. Specifically, we compared studies including
curved and angular contour types in behavioural preference tasks. 301 effectsizes obtained from 101 samples of participants of 60 studies were collected andanalysed by means of a three-level meta-analysis model. Results demonstratea moderate magnitude of preference for curvature. However, the effect ismoderated by variables such as dimension (i.e., the concept employed tomeasure preference), stimuli type (meaningless, object, space design, symbol
design), presentation time of the stimulus (limited vs. unlimited), and participants’expertise (non-experts, quasi-experts, experts). This study provides a more
complete framework to understand visual preference for curvature. We also
discuss our findings with the aim to enrich the design of subsequent studies
exploring the effect of curvature.

T12

Title: “A neurophysiological explanation of S-R spatial compatibility effects”
Authors: José M. Gavilán1 & José A. Aznar-Casanova2

Affiliations: (1) Department of Psychology, Research Center for Behavior
Assessment (CRAMC), Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain; (2)Departmental Section of Cognition. Faculty of Psychology. Universitat deBarcelona, Barcelona, Spain
Abstract: Studies with S-R spatial compatibility tasks show that subjects are
faster and more accurate when they have to press a button that is on the sameside as the stimulus (ipsilateral) than when it is on the opposite side
(contralateral). The present study uses tasks of this type to explore the activityof the ventral (VP) and dorsal (DP) pathways of vision, aiming to support
neurophysiological explanations that propose that the function of the VP (Whatsystem) is object recognition, while that of the DP (Where-system) is object
localization. A total of three experiments were performed by using two Strooptype spatial compatibility tasks (A and B). Experiment-1 analyzes the interaction
between the relevant and irrelevant properties of the stimulus by manipulating
the participants' attention, orienting it to its shape (VP) or its spatial position (DP).
In Experiment-2, we manipulated the subject's reference frame (North-SouthEast-West) by virtually varying the orientation of the PC in which the stimuli andresponses appeared. In Experiment-3, we manipulated the rotation of the screen
or keyboard only. The results of Experiment-1 showed a different pattern of
response depending on the property to which attention is directed (shape versus
spatial position), which seems to indicate a different involvement of the ventral
and dorsal visual pathways. Experiments 2-3 showed that virtual rotations
modulated the results of Experiment-1, with a predominance of DP (localization)over VP (identification). We conclude that a plausible interpretation of S-R spatialcompatibility effects is consistent with the anatomical-physiological framework ofperceptual and action processing pathways.
T13

Title: “Position and speed visual precision in a timing task under different
temporal constraints”
Authors: Joan López-Moliner
Affiliations: Universitat de Barcelona
Abstract: Changes of target position and speed are known to be relevant todetermine the precision of motor movements in interceptive timing but, little is
known about visual sensitivity to position and speed of targets under different
temporal constraints. We use reverse correlation to interceptive timing in a novel
way within Virtual Reality (VR) to study precision to position and speed byinferring their kernels at the time of interception. Participants pressed a button(keypress condition) or synchronized the end of hand movements (movement
condition) when a cloud of approaching dots was aligned with a grid in front of
the participants. We added Gaussian noise to the average speed of the cloud sothat each dot had a slightly different speed. We recorded the time of the keypress
and hand movement onset and offset. After categorizing the responses into earlyand late categories, we computed the difference of the position and speed noisy
distributions between these categories. This difference resembled an edge
detection filter and a tuning function for position and speed respectively and were
well explained by a kernel based on the difference of two Gaussians with similarmeans in the case of speed and the SD of the Gaussians reflecting their
sensitivity to position or speed. We found a superior selectivity for position andspeed in the movement condition probably because these variables could bemeasured at different times during the action. These results show the benefitsof VR in combination with psychophysical techniques in interceptive timing.
Acknowledgements:
Grant
PID2020-114713GB-I00
fundedby
MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033

T14

Title: “The two phases of grasping with a Sensory Substitution Glove”
Authors: Carlos de Paz, David Travieso, Jorge Ibáñez-Gijón, & David M. Jacobs
Affiliations: Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 28049,
Madrid, Spain

Abstract: Grasping objects with the hand is a fundamental skill of humans.
Current theories on the motor control of grasping differ in their description of thisaction. The visuomotor channels model holds that prehension is divided into twosequential, although dependent, reach and grasp components (Jeannerod,
1984, 1999). Alternatively, the double-pointing theory (Smeets & Brenner, 1999)
claims that grasping consists of moving and placing the fingers on the object
surface, controlling them independently as a pointing movement. In order toaddress the two phases in the prehension movement, a pointing and a graspingtask were performed with a sensory substitution glove, without vision. The glove
includes two vibration motors, on the index finger and on the thumb. The motors
vibrate when the corresponding finger points toward the object. The vibration
intensity increases when the hand approaches the target. Hand movements
were recorded through a motion capture system. Results of Experiment 1 showthat participants pointed to objects with a mean absolute angular error (1.38º)lower than the angular size of the object (3.82º). In Experiment 2, participants
grasped cylinders of different sizes and distances. They were successful in 83%
of the trials, and their grasping behavior was adapted to the different distancesand sizes. Most important, the analysis of the hand trajectory showeddistinguishable reaching and grasping phases. Therefore, our results support theidea that prehension is divided into sequential phases rather than independent
movements of the fingers.
T15

Title: “Memories of Collisions”
Authors: Matthias S. Keil
Affiliations:
FacultatdePsicologia,
DepartamentdeCognició,
Desenvolupament i Psicologia de l’Educació (Processos Cognitius), Pg. de laVall d'Hebron, 171 (Campus Mundet), ES-08035 Barcelona
Abstract: Getting hit by a ball is usually not a pleasant experience. While a ball
may not terminate one's life, other objects may well do so. For this reason, manyorganisms (from humans to insects) have neuronal mechanisms for detecting
and avoiding collision threats. The study of the underlying neuronal circuitry is
still ongoing. Many computational proposals rely on some form of temporalcontrast integration, because the temporal contrast of an approaching object
correlates with its visual angle. Mechanisms based on contrast integration,
however, are quickly driven to their limits when the observer moves as well. Withobserver movement, it is often difficult to distinguish the background-induced
temporal contrast from that of an approaching object.
Acknowledgements: This work was funded by the grant PGC2018-099506-BI00 of the Spanish government.

T16

Title: “Hard to ignore? Irrelevant distractors receive partial attention in acontextual cueing task”
Authors: M Pilar Aivar, Patricia Aniento, David Hernández-Gutiérrez, Luca
Saini, Miguel A. Vadillo
Affiliations: Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
Abstract: In simple visual search tasks, repetition of spatial context reduces RTs
when the context is predictive of target location (Chun & Jiang, 1998). But, what
happens when the context is composed of relevant (same color as target) andirrelevant (different color) items? In these cases participants are instructed toignore irrelevant elements, but some influence of the ignored context seems tostill remain (Vadillo et al., 2020). To clarify this issue, in this study we directly
analyzed to which degree participants were able to ignore irrelevant items. In afirst experiment, we kept the number of relevant items constant, but varied thenumber of irrelevant items. In each trial, participants had to find a rotated T
among rotated Ls. Eight distractors had the same color as the target (relevant
distractors), while either 4 or 16 distractors had a different color (irrelevant
distractors). Half of the configurations were repeated along the experiment,intermixed with newly generated configurations. RTs replicated contextual
cueing effects, but also showed that it took longer to find the target when more

irrelevant distractors were presented, which suggests that these items could not
be completely ignored. In a second experiment, we recorded eye movements
during the task to obtain a direct measure of focal attention to irrelevant items.
Analysis of eye fixations over the whole experiment showed that about 12% of
all fixations were on relevant distractors and 6% on irrelevant distractors. Thissuggests that selective attention cannot completely suppress the effect ofirrelevant items.
Acknowledgements: Research supported by grant PID2020-118583GB-I00.
T17

Title: “Investigating Auditory Role-Reversal Effects Using Spatialized Pitch
Distributions”
Authors: Thomas McGee, Ömer Dağlar Tanrıkulu
Affiliations: Cognitive Science Program, Williams College, MA, USA
Abstract: The nuances of visual priming have been thoroughly investigatedusing various paradigms with different types of visual features. One such method
is role reversal, a priming methodology in which the visual feature values of
distractors and targets in a search task switch following multiple trials. Researchin audition, however, has largely addressed the priming of words or vocalizations
rather than lower-level auditory features. To our knowledge, there have been nostudies investigating auditory role-reversal effects; therefore, the degree towhich auditory priming parallels the repetition and role-reversal effects observedin low-level visual search tasks is unknown. By adapting an auditory search task
designed by Cusack and Carlyon (2003) to a role-reversal paradigm, we
designed the first instance of such a task. In our study, participants were tasked
with identifying the spatial location of a target tone that was differentiated from
distractors by its frequency range. The results of Experiment 1 demonstrate
auditory role-reversal effects using spatialized pitch distributions. In contrast tovisual role-reversal effects, in which increased response times may persist
throughout multiple trials, the observed role-reversal effects in the current study
were contained to the first trial following reversal. Preliminary data from
Experiment 2 suggests that the auditory system may encode the statistics of
distractor pitch distributions when presented with multiple stimulus arrays. Theseexperiments demonstrate further parallels between auditory and visual priming
in low-level stimulus features and may provide important insights into theprobabilistic nature of perceptual representations in auditory processing.

T18

Title: “Virtual Reality maze generator tool for the study of spatial navigation inhumans”
Authors: Sergi Àvila Sangüesa1, Marcos Sánchez2, Salvador Soto-Faraco3,4,Josep Blat2, Lluis Fuentemilla5,6,7, Mireia Torralba Cuello2
Affiliations: (1) Research Center for Visualization, Virtual Reality and Graphics
Interaction, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain; (2) Departament de lesTecnologies i la Informació, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain; (3)Multisensory Research Group, Center for Brain and Cognition, University of
Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain; (4) Catalan Institution for Research andAdvanced Studies (ICREA), Barcelona, Spain; (5) Cognition and Brain Plasticity
Group, Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL), Hospitalet de
Llobregat, Spain; (6) Department of Cognition, Development and Educational
Psychology, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain; (7) Institute of
Neurosciences, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
Abstract: Everyday life often requires us to navigate and orient in theenvironment to reach our goals. Inter-personal skills in Spatial Navigation (SN),the set of abilities that allows us to accomplish this, varies largely throughhumans. It is well established, for example, that SN declines in elder adults.
Recent studies have highlighted the potential of using Virtual Reality (VR) for the
study of SN in humans. The main potential of VR in research is that it allows forcontrol of the environment without being limited to a 2d screen, thus increasing
the ecological validity of the experiments. However, the time and technical skills
required for developing VR environments may limit the use of this new powerfultool in cognitive studies. We developed a tool in Virtual Reality in order to perform
experiments that study spatial navigation in humans with simultaneous EEG
recording. The tool allows the design of customized T-junction mazes withdifferent characteristics and also includes the option to perform auditory andvisual stimulation. Importantly, users do not need previous VR knowledge inorder to use the tool. We expect this maze design tool will make available theuse of VR to study SN to many researchers in the cognitive neurosciences area.
Acknowledgements: This project is supported by Bial Foundation (Sensory
Entrainment for Improving Spatial Navigation, ref: 229-2020). We acknowledged
Hanna Preus for developing questionnaires for the evaluation of the VR tool andfor her contribution in the design.

Posters

P01

Title: “Moving things with your eye’s mind. Dynamic mental imagery of visual
stimuli in motion and its link to time perception”
Authors: Jose Á. Muñoz¹˒², Antonio Prieto³, Pedro R. Montoro³
Affiliations: (1) Escuela Internacional de Doctorado UNED. Programa deDoctorado en Psicología. Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia(UNED), Madrid, España; (2) Universidad Internacional de la Rioja (UNIR),
Logroño, España; (3) Departamento de Psicología Básica I, UNED, Madrid,
España.
Abstract: Given the lack of sensory receptors for a direct time perception in the
nervous system, as opposed to those for other sensory features, this study
intends to determine whether the psychophysical curves that can be obtained
for time perception in motion-related tasks resemble those of other sensory
systems or rather show any significant differences. However, since the cognitive
system is known to take advantage of motor activity, as a motor-sensory
feedback for on-the-go corrections on time perception, we hypothesize mental
motion imagery (without body movement) to prevent this feedback from affecting
time perception -as revealed through dynamic mental imagery-. In this regard,
100 participants (50 each) performed two consecutive tasks: (1) a partially
imagined task, where the subjects mentally indicated the moment when a visible
object in straight motion, that turns invisible at some point, reached the end of
its trajectory; and (2) a fully imagined task, in which the participants had tomentally visualize the object and its whole motion between two visible
boundaries at the same constant speed already seen in the former task. In thepartially imagined condition, subjects consistently overestimated the elapsed
time, whereas, in the fully imagined condition, short durations (2000 - 6000 ms)
were overestimated, whereas long ones (6000 – 12000 ms) were
underestimated, with an absolute error increasing as the real durations became
shorter or longer than 6000 ms. These findings may show relevant implications
for existing theories about the structure and dynamics of mental visual imagery
along with time perception.

P02

Title: “Basic psychophysics of deep networks trained via maximum
differentiation”
Authors: Q. Li, P. Hernandez-Camara, J. Vila-Tomas, V. Laparra & J. Malo
Affiliations: Image Processing Lab (IPL). Universitat de Valencia
Abstract: Traditional experiments to get the parameters of vision models are
based on direct physiological recordings of neural responses or on thepsychophysics of incremental thresholds of calibrated patterns. Theseexperiments would guarantee the accuracy of the models but they are costly,
and data is scarce to fit complex general-purpose models. That is why newer
psychophysical alternatives have been proposed for faster model estimation.

However, one may wonder if the models fitted using these non-classicalpsychophysics actually reproduce the trends of classical visual psychophysics.
In fact, limitations in reproducing classical psychophysics have been used as anoble way to propose improvements to architectures which are not easy topropose otherwise [Martinez et al. Front. Neurosci. 19]. In this work we focus ona specific cascade of linear+nonlinear layers which was tuned via non-classicalpsychophysics, e.g. Maximum Differentiation and fitting large image quality
databases [Martinez et al. PLOS 18, Malo et al. J. Vis. 21]. The architecture ofthis network is classical as it was intended to account for the different
physiological layers in the neural pathway (retina, LGN, V1) and for the different
psychophysical features of perception (opponent color nonlinearities, contrast
computation, frequency selectivity, masking in the spatial domain, and masking
in local-oriented representations). However, in this network, the reproduction ofa wide set of classic psychophysical facts has not been tested. In this work wefill this gap by checking a representative visual psychophysics program [MaloCIP 22]. More information and links at http://isp.uv.es/docs/Li_et_al_CIP_22.pdf
Acknowledgements: This work was partially funded by the EU / Spanish
Government grants MICINN PID2020-118071GBI00 and MICINN PDC2021121522-C21, and by the Generalitat Valenciana grant Grisolía-P/2019/035
P03

Title: “Basic psychophysics of deep networks trained for subjective image
distortion”
Authors: J. Vila-Tomás, P. Hernández-Cámara, Q. Li, A. Hepburn, V. Laparra
and J. Malo
Affiliations: Image Processing Lab (IPL). Universitat de València
Abstract: Perceptnet is a convolutional neural network that established thestate-ofthe-art in image quality metrics in 2020 with a fraction of the parametersof conventional models (such as Alexnet or VGG) [Hepburn et al. IEEE ICIP
2020]. The architecture of Perceptnet is inspired in classical vision models where
the physiologically inspired divisive normalization was used for the nonlinear
stages [Carandini and Heeger Nat. Neurosci. 2012]. Its cascade oflinear+nonlinear transforms has the following biological rationale: input images
undergo a divisive normalization so that digital units may be transformed into
tristimulus values, the following pointwise convolutional layer may generate
achromatic and opponent chromatic channels while another divisive
normalization is used so that Weber-like and Von-Kries-like nonlinearities may
emerge. A spatial convolution with 6 filters follows so that centersurroundneurons may emerge, whereas the next divisive normalization may account forenergy masking in the spatial domain. The last convolutional layer includes
multiple spatial filters to allow V1-like local oriented sensors to appear, and thefinal divisive normalization may account for cross frequency/orientation masking.
It is important to note that despite Perceptnet was tuned with human opinions
and its architecture was chosen so that biological-like behavior could emerge,
there is no actual guarantee that its final elements are similar to biologicalneurons or that the network reproduces other visual psychophysics beyond
image distortion [Martinez et al. Front. Neurosci. 2019]. In order to clarify if
Perceptnet can be seen as an actual vision model, here we check if Perceptnet
reproduces a representative program of classical visual psychophysics [MaloCIP 2022]. More info and links at http://isp.uv.es/docs/Vila_et_al_CIP_22.pdf
Acknowledgements: This work was partially funded by the EU / Spanish
Government grants MICINN PID2020-118071GBI00 and MICINN PDC2021121522-C21, and by the Generalitat Valenciana grant Grisol´ıa-P/2019/035

P04

Title: “The detection of perceptual statistical irregularities interacts acrosssensory modalities”
Authors: Marc Sabio, Lluís Fuentemilla, Alexis Pérez-Bellido
Affiliations: (1) Department of Cognition, Development and Educational
Psychology, University of Barcelona; (2) Cognition and Brain Plasticity Group,Bellvitge Institute for Biomedical Research; (3) Institute of Neurosciences,
University of Barcelona
Abstract: In daily life, we draw on environmental regularities to anticipate
perceptual changes. Research on statistical learning showed that this can occur
incidentally and independently for each sensory modality. Here, we examined
whether statistical learning in one sensory modality had any impact on anothersensory modality, even without conscious awareness.
Participants were exposed to concurrent but uncorrelated pairs of visual(oriented gratings) and auditory stimuli (frequency tones). In different blocks,
participants performed a perceptual discrimination task on the visual (orientation
discrimination) or in the auditory modalities (frequency discrimination), that was
orthogonal to the learned stimuli associations. We tested whether expectation
violations in the unattended modality affected the discrimination performance inthe attended one. Using Signal Detection Theory analyses, we found that
concurrent expectation violations in the unattended modality had a negative
impact on the performance in the attended modality. Specifically, a violation in
the unattended modality reduced the sensitivity to discriminate stimulus
differences in the attended modality, by increasing the proportion of false alarms(that is, biased participants to categorize the standard stimuli as deviant ones).
Our results suggest that predictive systems are not completely modality-specific,
as predictive violations in an unattended sensory modality affect the perceptual
performance in the attended modality.
P05

Title: “Colour differences between consecutive hyperspectral acquisitions ofpaintings”
Authors: Alexandre Monteiro1, Sérgio Nascimento1, João Linhares1
Affiliations: (1) Physics Center of Minho and Porto Universities (CF-UM-UP),
Gualtar Campus, University of Minho, 4715-057 Braga (Portugal)
Abstract: The aim of this work was to compare consecutive hyperspectral
acquisitions of the same art painting, comparing the data obtained and theinfluence of image registration methodologies. Spectral reflectance of four
paintings were retrieved from data acquired by imaging the paintings using a
hyperspectral imaging system. Two consecutives’ images were obtained,
without changing the acquisition setup. Reflectance was then converted into the
CIELAB color space assuming the CIED65 illuminant and the CIE 1931 Standard
Observer. Comparisons were done in CIELAB by computing the variations in thevolume of the colour gamut and the number of discernible colours acrosspaintings and acquisitions, under three different conditions. First condition ofanalysis assumed no image registration (NoIR) between consecutive
acquisitions. Second condition assumed manual image registration (MIR) andthe third condition assumed automatic image registration (AIR). Variations were
estimated as the ratio computed across acquisitions, assuming a variation of 0
as no variations across acquisitions.
It was found that the average across the four paintings for the variations in thenumber of discernible colours, was of 0.55±0.13 for NoIR and AIR and of
9.55±0.62 for MIR, and for the variations in the colour volume an average of
0.66±0.19 for NoIR and AIR and of 30.19±3.82 for MIR. These results seem toindicate that consecutive hyperspectral image acquisitions provide small
variations on the colour volume and on the number of discernible colours. If
image registration procedures are required between acquisitions, it seems thatmanual image registration procedures increase the colour errors between
acquisitions.
Acknowledgements: Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P. (FCT)

P06

Title: “Don´t let me down: emotional context influences pitch perception”
Authors: Marta Szabina Papai, Vasileia Christou & Jordi Navarra
Affiliations: University of Barcelona
Abstract: Context priming allowed us to investigate whether generating aperceptual context in a particular domain (e.g., the visual perception ofpositive/negative emotions) influences the perception in another domain (theauditory perception of pitch).
Happy versus sad visual contexts were created to test possible congruent/incongruent effects in the identification of ascending/descending sounds. We
considered congruent the combination of happy emotion and ascending pitch,or sad emotion and descending pitch, respectively. Our results suggest astatistically significant congruency effect in happy as well as in sad conditions,with different directionality though. When happy images were followed by soundswith ascending pitch, we observed slower reaction times in comparison to thepresentation of happy images accompanied by sounds with descending pitch.
An opposite pattern was observed for sad contexts, where reaction times were
faster in congruent than in incongruent condition. One might raise the question
then, to what extent could be these differences explained by emotional contexts
triggered by different attentional mechanisms. Besides, the results are also
discussed in terms of the representation of magnitude.
P07

Title: “Experimental aesthetics without semantics”
Authors: C.Alejandro Parraga1, Marcos Muñoz González2, Xavier Otazu1,
Olivier Penacchio3
Affiliations: (1) Computer Vision Centre /Computer Science Dept., Univ.
Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain; (2) Computer Science Dept., Univ. Autònoma
de Barcelona, Spain; (3) School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of
St Andrews, UK
Abstract: Observers can easily assess how beautiful/ugly they consider animage to be. However, this aesthetics decision is influenced by both perceptual
factors (which determine bottom-up neural processing) and cognitive factors
such as contextual variables (which determine personal aesthetic preferences).
This dualism makes the problem of predicting aesthetic responses particularly
difficult from a computational point of view. In this work we simplify the problem
by creating a database of images devoid of contextual information (i.e.
“semantics”) which contains only images of natural objects. To address thestrong bias of such databases towards highly valued (beautiful) scenes, weincorporate images that were intentionally modified to make them “uglier”. We
then ask observers to evaluate the aesthetic value of every image using a
crowdsourcing paradigm (10426 images, 100 valuations each). This unbiased,
low-semantics database allows us to study the low-level visual properties thatare more likely to explain observers’ aesthetic response. Our results show thatthe strongest candidate is the “Chromatic contrast” (r= 0.513), followed by“Global Contrast” (r= 0.220), “Fourier Alpha Slope” (r= -0.209) and “Gamut
Expansion” (r= -0.118). For comparison, we run the same analysis using a more
traditional aesthetics image database (AVA, CVPR2012) with inconclusive or
negative results.
Acknowledgements: CAP, MMG and XO are funded by the Ministry of Scienceand Innovation, Spain. (Ref. PID2020-118254RB-I00)

P08

Title: “Saccadic characteristics differ between different types of strabismus”
Authors: Elena Sanz¹, Mª Pilar Aivar¹, Jaime Tejedor²Affiliations: (1) Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid; (2)Facultad de Medicina, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
Abstract: Previous studies have reported abnormal characteristics of eye
movements in patients with strabismus. Unfortunately, the existing results are
not entirely clear. An important shortcoming is that patients are not differentiatedaccording to their type of strabismus. In this study, we analyzed saccadic eye
movements of young strabismic patients suffering from intermittent exotropia or
accommodative esotropia, comparing performance with that of controls.
Participants were 28 children, of ages between 5 and 12 years old (11 cases ofaccommodative esotropia, 7 cases of intermittent exotropia and 10 controls).
Eye movements were recorded while performing different tasks. To produce
saccades a single image was presented at the center of the screen, whichjumped randomly to a new position. Displacements varied in direction andamplitude (10º and 15º left and right, 10º up and down). Saccadic latency andgain, and differences in eye position between both eyes were analyzed. We
found significant differences in latency between the three groups, althoughvariability was very high. Gain was most affected in cases of exotropia, showing
significant differences between patients and controls for all saccadic directions
except upwards. Gain was also significantly different between exotropia andesotropia, but only for saccades in the right direction. Esotropia patients also
showed the biggest differences in eye position between left and right eye, whichsuggests possible problems in adjusting vergence.
These results show that eye movement parameters differ for each type ofstrabismus. An exhaustive analysis of each clinical subtype is needed tounderstand how these differences affect visuo-motor performance.
P09

Title: “Perception of Computer-Manipulated Scenes: A Pilot Study With People
With Functional Diversity”
Authors: Lobato Rincón L.L.1, Miguel Vicente C.2, Martínez Madrid C.B.3 &Medina Sánchez, M.A.4
Affiliations: (1) Department of Experimental Psychology, Cognitive Processes
and Speech Therapy. University Complutense of Madrid. (2) Department ofSocial Work and Social Services. University Complutense of Madrid; (3)Department of Animal Medicine and Surgery. University Complutense of Madrid;(4) Department of Statistics and Data Science. University Complutense of
Madrid.
Abstract: The perception of landscape in people with functional diversity has
been an understudied area. For this reason, an experimental pilot study was
designed with the dual aim of analysing the environmental perception of people
with and without functional diversity and investigating the effect of altering digital
images on their realism or declared preferences. Using an online questionnaire,the order and appearance of two environmental scenes of the Somosaguas
Campus area (Madrid) were manipulated. In this way, the altered image waspresented to half of the sample in first place (n=12) and in the second place tothe other half (n=12). In total, 10 people with functional diversity of varied profile(physical, sensory, etc...) were evaluated. Among the findings obtained, we
found that people with functional diversity use more general descriptions for thecomputer-altered images than people without diversity, who use assessmentsthat include a greater number of environmental details. On the other hand, thefamiliarity, realism or affective evaluation of the images were analysed as awhole. As a result, it emerges that, for the whole sample, the first image
presented always achieved better evaluation, while there is a tendency in thegroup with functional diversity to value the digitally altered photograph more
highly. Although this is an exploratory study, the results indicate that there could
be a greater vulnerability to altered images on the part of people with functional
diversity and would allow us to know in the future under what conditions thisphenomenon could exist.
Acknowledgements: The team would like to thank the workers of the AFADISUCM Special Employment Center for their involvement, as well as all the study
participants.