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Stefania Mattioni, Ph.D.

@stefaniamatt.bsky.social
60 followers 79 following 13 posts

Cognitive neuroscientist exploring how sensory experience shape conceptual knowledge, using neuroimaging and behavioural approaches.

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Stefania Mattioni, Ph.D. @stefaniamatt.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
How quickly we update our beliefs depends on the environment. This recently published work, shows that humans adjust their learning rates both rapidly, from recent prediction errors, and gradually, through environment-specific meta-learning—supported by representations in the orbitofrontal cortex.
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Reposted by Stefania Mattioni, Ph.D.
Ghent Center for Cognitive Neuroscience @ghentccn.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
Two time scales of adaptation in human learning rates doi.org/10.7554/eLif...
doi.org
Two time scales of adaptation in human learning rates
Humans adapt learning rates on both a fast and a slow time scale, and the central orbitofrontal cortex may represent the slow time scale.
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Stefania Mattioni, Ph.D. @stefaniamatt.bsky.social · 19/11/2025
📄 Impact of a transient neonatal visual deprivation on the development of the ventral occipito-temporal cortex in humans by Mattioni et al. (2025) rdcu.be/eQjMH
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Stefania Mattioni, Ph.D. @stefaniamatt.bsky.social · 19/11/2025
This work was possible thanks to the dedication of an incredible team — across labs, countries, and expertise. A huge thank you to the co-authors: [M.Rezk, X.Gao, J.Nam, Z-X.Liu, @remigau.bsky.social, V.Goffaux, @costantinoai.bsky.social, H.Op de Beeck, T.Lewis, D.Maurer, @olicolli.bsky.social ].
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Stefania Mattioni, Ph.D. @stefaniamatt.bsky.social · 19/11/2025
This challenges the classic “cascade” model of visual development — the idea that if early vision is impaired, higher areas must fail too. Instead, our data show that the ventral visual stream can reorganize and recover.
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Stefania Mattioni, Ph.D. @stefaniamatt.bsky.social · 19/11/2025
Together, these results reveal different sensitive periods across the visual system: • Early visual areas need input early on to develop normally • Higher-level regions can recover from early loss if later visual experience is rich enough
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Stefania Mattioni, Ph.D. @stefaniamatt.bsky.social · 19/11/2025
In sum: Brief blindness right after birth permanently alters low level visual processing in EVC — but higher-level areas (VOTC) remain surprisingly resilient. Although early deprivation disrupts basic feature encoding, the brain can develop normal categorical representations later in life.
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Stefania Mattioni, Ph.D. @stefaniamatt.bsky.social · 19/11/2025
To dig deeper, we trained deep neural networks on degraded visual input to model how vision develops after early deprivation. The networks mirrored our brain findings: – Early layers (V1-like) stayed impaired – Higher layers (VOTC-like) recovered normal categorical coding
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Stefania Mattioni, Ph.D. @stefaniamatt.bsky.social · 19/11/2025
In addition, we ran a control experiment where typical participants viewed altered images to mimic the visual deficits of the cataract group. Result: this degraded vision disrupted both EVC and VOTC — unlike in the cataract-reversal participants, where only EVC was affected.
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Stefania Mattioni, Ph.D. @stefaniamatt.bsky.social · 19/11/2025
We also tested whether these effects were due to the participants’ current visual quality (e.g., reduced acuity, nystagmus). Using the deepMReye toolbox, we tracked and controlled for eye movements ensuring that our brain results weren’t driven by differences in gaze behavior.
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Stefania Mattioni, Ph.D. @stefaniamatt.bsky.social · 19/11/2025
We then tested within-category decoding: Can the brain tell apart individual images within a category? Cataract-reversal participants showed reduced decoding accuracy in EVC across all categories tested. This indicates a broad low-level visual impairment, not tied to any specific category.
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Stefania Mattioni, Ph.D. @stefaniamatt.bsky.social · 19/11/2025
Representational similarity analyses showed: • EVC matched low-level visual models less in cataract-reversal participants • VOTC maintained normal categorical structure Indicating impaired early visual coding but preserved downstream category representation.
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Stefania Mattioni, Ph.D. @stefaniamatt.bsky.social · 19/11/2025
We used fMRI to study how “cataract-reversal” individuals process visual categories—faces, bodies, houses, tools, and words—compared with sighted controls. The focus: how early deprivation affects low- and high-level visual processing, from EVC (early visual cortex) to VOTC (ventral occ-temp cort).
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Stefania Mattioni, Ph.D. @stefaniamatt.bsky.social · 19/11/2025
1. 🧵 Thread: What happens to the visual brain after early transient blindness? Our new Nature Communications paper examines a rare population: people born with dense bilateral cataracts—a short blindness occurring during a critical window of visual development. 🔗 rdcu.be/eQjMH
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Reposted by Stefania Mattioni, Ph.D.
International Multisensory Research Forum @imrf.bsky.social · 11/11/2025
Exciting times as we hand over to the new hosts of #IMRF2026 in Genoa 😍 Please watch this space for more information about next year's event. We cannot wait to see you all in Italy in June Over and out 👋 your #IMRF2025 team
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Reposted by Stefania Mattioni, Ph.D.
Olivier Collignon @olicolli.bsky.social · 08/10/2025
First time I share a time-slot in a conf with a minister (Rachida Dati, Minister for culture in France) 🤔 Celebration day for the 200 years of the Braille system, the universal tactile reading system for blind. I will speak about how the mind and brain process this crucial cultural invention.
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