After completing my Bachelor’s degree in Psychology at Baskent University, Ankara (Turkey), I joined the lab for my internship and master’s thesis in December 2020 while being a student in the Social, Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience (SCAN) MSc program at Freie Universität Berlin.

Before I joined the lab, I was a recipient of a 2-month scholarship in the Summer Research Fellowship Program at Ècole polytechnique fèdèrale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Lausanne, Switzerland. Throughout this program, I worked in the Human Cognitive Neuroscience branch of a Behavioral Genetics Lab (Sandi Lab) by learning and also implementing what I learned to perform exploratory data analysis on stress response scores and Big Five personality traits.

During my Bachelor’s studies, I worked in the Cognitive Psychology (COGLAB) at Baskent University and I’ve contributed to several projects on the stress levels and individual differences in feedback responses in the context of attention.

For my MSc thesis, I’m working on an exciting project about the effects of the visual backward masking paradigm on visual cognition to study the spatio-temperol dynamics of the paradigm in the context of visual object recognition. In the project, we are employing EEG and fMRI methods along with computational techniques including multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) and representational similarity analysis (RSA). I am supervised by Radek Cichy and Siying Xie.

As for the future, I’m heavily interested in studying the role of feedback signals in the brain that play potentially key roles in visual processing and memory replay, and also mental imagery research that might provide valuable insights into cognitive dysfunction in clinical research settings and decision making.

I also love writing and playing music, and collecting vinyl as an avid listener, as for me, delving into the depths of any aspect related to music always sparks joy in my life as a lifelong learner and explorer in every possible way.

My GitHub page: https://github.com/batiyilmaz

See here for my CV.