Ilker Yildirim

What are the algorithms of the mind implemented in neural activity and online psychological processes? Our work focuses on visual cognition, uncovering the computational logic and intermediate representations that transform images into rich representations of objects, agents, and places that we can think about and plan with. These computational theories synthesize an especially broad technical toolkit, including probabilistic programming, causal generative models, dynamical systems, and deep neural networks. We test these models in objective, performance-based psychophysical experiments in humans. We also test these models in neural data from non-human primate experiments via experimental collaborators and in human imaging experiments that we design and execute. This work provides new multilevel insights — uncovering neural mechanisms and online psychological processes — into object perception, intuitive physics, goal-driven attention, and aspects of human reasoning processes.