Dr. Marlene Behrmann is a Professor of Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University, whose research specializes in the cognitive basis of visual perception, with a specific focus on object recognition. Widely considered to be a trailblazer and a worldwide leader in the field of visual cognition, she was inducted into the National Academy of Sciences in 2015 and into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019.
Below are some recent publications from the lab:
An expanded brain network for object recognition. In this schematic depiction of the visual system, the ventral pathway (V1 to ATL) acts much like a DNN (bottom) – extracting increasingly complex local object features, but not a complete shape. Instead, structural information describing the global shape of an object, but not its individual features (top; depicted as a red skeleton), may be computed in dorsal visual pathway regions such as IPS. This information is then sent to the ventral pathway to form a complete object representation.
Example stimuli from the (A) object-centered part relations, (B) allocentric relations (C) depth, (D)and tool localizers used in Experiment 1.
Conjunction maps illustrating areas of distinct and overlapping coding for object-centered part-relations and (A) allocentric relations, (B) depth, and (C) tools. A value closer 1 indicates a greater response to part relations; a value closer to 0 indicates
Ayzenberg, V., & Behrmann, M. (2022). The dorsal visual pathway represents object-centered spatial relations for object recognition. Journal of Neuroscience. doi: https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2257-21.202
Professor of Psychology, Marlene Behrmann, Ph.D.
CV, PubMed, Scholar
B.A. in Speech and Hearing Therapy: 1981, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
M.A. in Speech Pathology: 1984, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
Ph.D. in Psychology: 1991, University of Toronto, Canada
News
Welcome to the lab Dr. Shouyu Ling!
Congratulations to Dr. Michael Granovetter who succesfully defended his PhD!
Congratulations to Sophia Robert for winning the Females of Vision et al (FoVea) travel award to attend the Annual Vision Sciences Society (VSS) and for winning the Carnegie Graduate Student Fellowship to work with this year's prize recipient Dr. Marisa Carrasco at NY
New publications:
Ayzenberg, V. and Behrmann, M. (2022). Does the ventral visual pathway compute shape? TiCS, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2022.09.019
Granovetter, M.C., Ettensohn, L., Robert, S and Behrmann, M. (2022). With Childhood Hemispherectomy, One Hemisphere Can Support--But is Suboptimal for--Word and Face Recognition, PNAS, in press. https://biorxiv.org/cgi/content/short/2020.11.06.371823v1
Haigh, S. M., Van Key, L., Eack, S. M., Leitman, D. I., Salisbury, D.F. * Behrmann, M. (2022). Assessing trial-to-trial variability in auditory ERPs in autism and schizophrenia. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.Special issue: Sensory Features in Autism and Related Conditions: Developmental Approaches, Mechanisms and Targeted Interventions, in press.
Liu, N., Behrmann, M.,Turchi, J. N., Avidan, G., Hadj-Bouziane, F. and Ungerleider, L. (2022). Hierarchical organization of face patches in macaque cortex as revealed by fMRI and pharmacological inactivation, Nature Communications.
Haigh, S., Brosseau, P., Eack, S. M., Leitman, D., Salisbury, D. Behrmann, M. (2022). Hyper-sensitivity to pitch is related to poorer prosody processing in adults with autism, Frontiers in Psychiatry, 13, 13:844830. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2022.844830
Ayzenberg, V., & Behrmann, M. (2022). The dorsal visual pathway represents object-centered spatial relations for object recognition. Journal of Neuroscience.
Sha, Z., Van Rooij, D... Anagnostou, E., Arango, C., Auzias, G., Behrmann, M., ... & Francks, C. (2022). Subtly altered topological asymmetry of brain structural covariance networks in autism spectrum disorder across 43 datasets from the ENIGMA consortium. Molecular Psychiatry, 1-12.
Ahmad, Z., Behrmann, M., Patterson, C., & Freud, E. (2022). Unilateral resection of both cortical visual pathways in a pediatric patient alters action but not perception. Neuropsychologia, 168, 108182.
Behrmann, M., & Avidan, G. (2022). Face perception: computational insights from phylogeny. Trends in Cognitive Sciences. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2022.01.006
Hoogman, M., Van Rooij, D., Klein, M... Behrmann, M... & Franke, B. (2022). Consortium neuroscience of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder and autism spectrum disorder: The ENIGMA adventure. Human brain mapping, 43(1), 37-55.
Blauch, N. M., Behrmann, M. and Plaut, D. C. (2022). A connectivity-constrained computational account of topographic organization in high-level visual cortex, PNAS.
We strive to foster an inclusive and welcoming environment, where everyone feels respected and valued. I encourage individuals from under-represented minority groups, who may be interested in short-term projects, PhD programs, or postdoctoral training to reach out to me by email (behrmann [at] cmu [dot] edu) to discuss opportunities.
The Psychology Department’s full Statement of Community Standards can be found here.