Cognitive Neuroscientist

Lak Lab
Department of Physiology, Anatomy & Genetics
University of Oxford

Artboard 1.png

About me

I am a post-doctoral researcher in cognitive neuroscience. I study how our brains process visual information and how we make efficient and accurate decisions about what we see. For instance, I investigate how our brains exploit the temporal stability of the environment and use visual information of the recent past to optimize current perception and decisions. My research relies on a mixture of several techniques, such as psychophysics, computational modelling and neuroimaging (fMRI and MEG). My current research is funded by an HFSP Long-Term Fellowship.

CV

Postdoctoral Fellow in Neuroscience
2021 - now
Lak Lab, Department of Physiology, Anatomy & Genetics, University of Oxford (UK)

Postdoctoral Researcher in Cognitive Neuroscience
2020 - 2021
Predictive Brain Lab, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour (Netherlands)

PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience
2016-2020
Predictive Brain Lab, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour (Netherlands)

MSc in Cognitive Neuroscience
2014 - 2016
Radboud University, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour (Netherlands)

BSc in Cognitive Science
2010 - 2014
Osnabrück University (Germany)
 

Research

Featured
A Bayesian and efficient observer model explains concurrent attractive and repulsive history biases in visual perception
A Bayesian and efficient observer model explains concurrent attractive and repulsive history biases in visual perception

Human perceptual decisions can be repelled away from (repulsive adaptation) or attracted towards recent visual experience (attractive serial dependence). It is currently unclear whether and how these repulsive and attractive biases interact during visual processing and what computational principles underlie these history dependencies. Here we disentangle repulsive and attractive biases by exploring their respective timescales. We find that perceptual decisions are concurrently attracted towards the short-term perceptual history and repelled from stimuli experienced up to minutes into the past. The temporal pattern of short-term attraction and long-term repulsion cannot be captured by an ideal Bayesian observer model alone. Instead, it is well captured by an ideal observer model with efficient encoding and Bayesian decoding of visual information in a slowly changing environment. Concurrent attractive and repulsive history biases in perceptual decisions may thus be the consequence of the need for visual processing to simultaneously satisfy constraints of efficiency and stability.

Read More →
Impaired Motor Recycling during Action Selection in Parkinson’s Disease
Impaired Motor Recycling during Action Selection in Parkinson’s Disease

The human motor system recycles motor parameters of previous actions when programming new actions, promoting efficient motor behavior. Here, we investigated the contribution of the basal ganglia to this transfer of motor parameters over subsequent actions. We assessed motor recycling by analyzing kinematic movement parameters during sequential hand movements that involved either a switch or no switch between hands. Compared with matched controls, Parkinson’s patients were impaired in transferring previously used motor parameters to new actions, but only when switching actions between hands. This suggest that the basal ganglia are important for motor recycling, and that the impaired ability of Parkinson’s patients to perform this computation may result in motor slowing.

Read More →
The role of feature-based attention in visual serial dependence
The role of feature-based attention in visual serial dependence

In this paper we show that feature-based attention strongly modulates visual serial dependence, and differentially affects attractive biases between similar stimuli versus repulsive biases between dissimilar stimuli.

Read More →

Publications

Preprints

*Majumdar, A, *Ashcroft, C, *Fritsche, M, Zatka-Haas, P, Walker, N, Bijoch, L, Mistry, L, Rominto, A, Duckworth-Essilfie, T, Swann, J, Molnar, Z, Packer, A, Butt, S, Lak, A (2024). Distinct representations of economic variables across regions and projections of the frontal cortex. bioRxiv (*equal contribution)

Liebana Garcia, S, Laffere, A, Toschi, C, Schilling, L, Podlaski, J, Fritsche, M, Zatka-Haas, P, Li, Y, Bogacz, R, Saxe, A, Lak, A (2023). Striatal dopamine reflects individual long-term learning trajectories. bioRxiv

Journal articles

Fritsche, M, Majumdar, A, Strickland, L, Liebana Garcia, S, Bogacz, R, Lak, A (2024). Temporal regularities shape perceptual decisions and striatal dopamine signals. Nature Communications [data & code]

del Rio, M, de Lange, FP, *Fritsche, M, & *Ward, J (2024) Perceptual confirmation bias and decision bias underlie adaptation to sequential regularities. Journal of Vision [data & code] (*equal contribution)

Bosch, E, Fritsche, M, Utzerath, C, Buitelaar, JK, & de Lange, FP (2022). Adaptation and serial choice bias for low-level visual features are unaltered in autistic adolescents. Journal of Vision [data & code]

Fritsche, M, Solomon, SG, de Lange, FP (2022). Brief stimuli cast a persistent long-term trace in visual cortex. Journal of Neuroscience [code]

Fernández, G, & Healthy Brain Study consortium (2021). Protocol of the Healthy Brain Study: An accessible resource for understanding the human brain and how it dynamically and individually operates in its bio-social context. PLoS ONE

Bosch, E, Fritsche, M, Ehinger, BV, & de Lange FP (2020). Opposite effects of choice history and stimulus history resolve a paradox of sequential choice bias. Journal of Vision [data & code]

Fritsche, M, Spaak, E, & de Lange, FP (2020). A Bayesian and efficient observer model explains concurrent attractive and repulsive history biases in visual perception. eLife [data & code]

Fritsche, M, van der Wel, RPRD, Smit, R, Bloem, BR, Toni, I, & Helmich, RC (2020). Impaired motor recycling during action selection in Parkinson’s disease. eNeuro

Fritsche, M, Lawrence, SJD, & de Lange, FP (2020). Temporal tuning of repetition suppression across the visual cortex. Journal of Neurophysiology [data & code]

Fritsche, M, & de Lange, FP (2019). The role of feature-based attention in visual serial dependence. Journal of Vision [data & code]

Fritsche, M, & de Lange, FP (2019). Reference repulsion is not a perceptual illusion. Cognition [data & code]

He, T, Fritsche, M, & de Lange, FP (2018). Predictive remapping of visual features beyond saccadic targets. Journal of Vision [data & code]

Seeliger, K, Fritsche, M, Güçlü, U, Schoenmakers, S, Schoffelen, J-M, Bosch, SE, & van Gerven, MAJ (2018). Convolutional neural network-based encoding and decoding of visual object recognition in space and time. NeuroImage

de Lange, FP, & Fritsche, M (2017). Perceptual Decision-Making: Picking the Low-Hanging Fruit? Trends in Cognitive Sciences

Fritsche, M, Mostert, P, & de Lange, FP (2017). Opposite Effects of Recent History on Perception and Decision. Current Biology [data & code]

Thesis

Fritsche, M (2020). Temporal Context in Visual Perception [pdf]

 

Contact me

Department of Physiology, Anatomy & Genetics
University of Oxford

Sherrington Building, Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3PT, UK.