Welcome to the i (Eye) and Brain Mapping Laboratory
Science is important, but life and freedom are more important
My deepest thoughts and solidarity are these days to people in Ukrania
I wish them all the strenght and courage necessary to overcome injustice
and keep alive their democratic country
You can’t separate peace from freedom because
no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom
Malcolm X
I am working at the Department of Psychology of the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, where I hold the chair of Visual and Social Neuroscience in the French section of the Department, heading the iBMLab
I am also a member of the Human-IST (Human Centered Interaction Science and Technology) Institute of the University of Fribourg.
I obtained my degree and PhD in Psychology at the University of Geneva (Switzerland), on the interdisciplinary study of the "other-race" effect for faces (2002). During my PhD, I had the opportunity to investigate diverse topics on visual cognition and motor processing, by means of brain imaging techniques (EEG and fMRI), neuronal network simulations, brain-damaged patients and behavioural paradigms.
I have always been fascinated by human evolution and human diversity. In the past decade scientists have reported systematic differences in visual cognition between Westerners (i.e., West Europeans and North Americans) and Far Easterners (i.e., Chinese, Japanese and Koreans), questioning the assumption of universality of many cognitive processes. Our current work feeds this ongoing debate and we have a major research interest in mapping the role of culture in visual and social neuroscience (for a review, see Caldara, 2017).