Matthias Nau

I am an Assistant Professor at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and the principal investigator of the Behavioral Cognitive Neuroscience Lab. My research focuses on understanding the neural and behavioral mechanisms that support human perception, memory, and imagination. Specifically, I am interested in how our subjective experiences are constructed from sensory inputs and past knowledge, and how these processes unfold in both healthy populations and clinical conditions.

To tackle these questions, we utilize a combination of high-resolution functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), behavioral monitoring like eye tracking, and computational modeling. A significant part of our work is dedicated to understanding how behavior, such as eye movements, shapes neural activity across the brain and influences what we remember or imagine.

Beyond our experimental work, I am passionate about creating open-source tools and datasets that empower other researchers. Our lab actively develops software solutions to overcome technical challenges in cognitive neuroscience, such as MR-based eye tracking frameworks (e.g., DeepMReye), ensuring that our innovations can benefit the wider scientific community.