Sander van Bree
sandervanbree[at]gmail[.] com
Sander van Bree
sandervanbree[at]gmail[.] com
Postdoc
JLU Giessen
MPI Leipzig
University of Glasgow
About me
My research is aimed at figuring out how a dynamic brain realizes cognition. I see brain oscillations as a promising piece of the puzzle – they are a thread spanning most of my published work. Currently, I am studying how representations emerge in the primate visual system.
I spend time reading up across a variety of disciplines, as I enjoy the cross-pollination of ideas from distant topics. Most of my energy goes to neuroscience, cognitive science, and philosophy. Outside of science, my main passion is art. I'm a sucker for experimental film and music. Think peace and quiet alternated with noise and bursts of colored light.
I'm outspoken and I adopt a critical but constructive stance. I resonate with people who favor big picture thinking, and I value candidness and spaces that reduce academic hierarchy. I strive to write and speak pointedly and concisely, and I try to keep my software, data, and papers freely and publicly accessible.
Musings
When neural network representations converge
In this blog post I explore possible theoretical implications of the finding that trained neural networks tend to show similar internal representations. I riff off of two recent papers; Chen & Bonner (2024), and Huh et al. (2024). In this blog post, I ...
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The scope and limits of oscillations in language comprehension
Maybe neuroscience is sort of like an engineering project where we build bridges from brain to mind. On our side of the river lie the nuts and bolts of the brain, and on the other lies our psychology. Building the bridge is about explaining how the for...
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Introducing the Brain Time Toolbox
We've just published the paper accompanying the Brain Time Toolbox in Nature Human Behaviour (page; PDF). This post serves to give a brief introduction to the toolbox, explaining its raison d'être and how it works. In a sentence, it transforms electrop...
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Why neuroscience can’t do without philosophy
If you’re in a room with neuroscientists and somebody brings up philosophy, you can expect at least a few scoffs and eye rolls. I can see where this sentiment comes from. We’re strained from trying to make sense of our data as it stands, so to hear tha...
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