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Zakaria Djebbara

@zakdjebbara.bsky.social
221 followers 154 following 41 posts

Active Inference, Phenomenology, Mobile Brain/Body Imaging, generally fascinated by rhythms. Associate Professor, Architecture & Cognitive Neuroscience, Aalborg University, Denmark ⵣ

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Zakaria Djebbara @zakdjebbara.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
This sparks some questions: does it make sense to study architecture without interaction and mobility? In studying the brain using EEG, motion artefacts can be dealt with, but can we omit the body from our embodied brain?
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Zakaria Djebbara @zakdjebbara.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
The small architectural transition that marks the beginning of a new event, is also reflected in sensorimotor brain dynamics. We keep observing the inherent coupling between action/perception across our experiments.
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Zakaria Djebbara @zakdjebbara.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
In our new publication, we show that architectural transitions are reflected in the brain’s theta dynamics. As Event Segmentation Theory suggests, the brain does more than perceive space. In fact, it tracks the changing affordances of the environment and reorganizes experience around them.
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Zakaria Djebbara @zakdjebbara.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
I've always been fascinated by architectural transitions; doors, stairs, corridors, corners. They capture the spatio-temporal nature of architecture that goes beyond "styles" and -isms in design. So what happens in the brain when we pass through a transition? www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
sciencedirect.com
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Zakaria Djebbara @zakdjebbara.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
Environmental psychology often relies on coarse categories that bundle heterogeneous exposures. We propose a minimal, time-scale–aligned approach to feature families to specify environments mechanistically, moving the field from descriptive categories toward testable design hypotheses.
sciencedirect.com
Moving beyond environmental categories in environmental psychology
A growing body of research in environmental psychology demonstrates that environments influence cognition, affect, and mental health. However, environ…
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Zakaria Djebbara @zakdjebbara.bsky.social · 24/10/2025
Thanks, Hugo! Means a lot coming from you!
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Zakaria Djebbara @zakdjebbara.bsky.social · 24/10/2025
I want to thank all participants and the BBAR and BeMoBIL team; Dylan Huynh, Aleks Koselevs, Yiru Chen, Lars Fich and of course, Klaus Gramann for their contribution and efforts! Especially to @mobilebrainimaging.bsky.social for his continuous support!
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Zakaria Djebbara @zakdjebbara.bsky.social · 24/10/2025
Conclusion: Naturalistic locomotion with mobile EEG demonstrated that architectural decisions, such as corners, can invert classic attention patterns. Our brains tune to architecture beyond passive background; it is an active part of it. Surprisingly, environments shape us, just as we shape them.
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Zakaria Djebbara @zakdjebbara.bsky.social · 24/10/2025
EEG revealed it too. Both N1 and P3 components were modulated by turn angle — sharper turns reduced amplitudes, especially for congruent cues. Corners redistribute attention, demanding new visuomotor coordination.
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Zakaria Djebbara @zakdjebbara.bsky.social · 24/10/2025
Turning angles mattered: effects emerged around 15° (accuracy) and 30° (RTs). This shows that even subtle architectural geometry shapes perception and response — not metaphorically, but literally, through embodied movement. Behaviour is to some extent shaped by architectural decisions!
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Zakaria Djebbara @zakdjebbara.bsky.social · 24/10/2025
In VR, participants navigated corridors with different turning angles. Visual targets appeared either congruent or incongruent with the turn direction. Surprisingly, attention costs flipped — faster, more accurate for incongruent stimuli!
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Zakaria Djebbara @zakdjebbara.bsky.social · 24/10/2025
🚀 New paper! We just took a major step in understanding how architecture shapes cognition. Our paper shows that something as simple as corners in rooms or corridors can shift canonical spatial attention cueing costs. Key method? Mobile Brain/Body Imaging combined with VR! bit.ly/47m6ssV
bit.ly
Turning corners in built environments shifts spatial attention costs
Human attention is typically studied under static laboratory conditions, yet everyday cognition unfolds during active interactions with the built envi…
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Mike Frank @mcxfrank.bsky.social · 01/07/2025
Experimentology is out today!!! A group of us wrote a free online textbook for experimental methods, available at experimentology.io - the idea was to integrate open science into all aspects of the experimental workflow from planning to design, analysis, and writing.
Experimentology cover: title and curves for distributions.
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Alex Galvez-Pol @alexgalvezpol.bsky.social · 25/07/2025
🚨 We’re running a short self-report study on how BREATHING interacts with your daily life 🫁🌍 We're struggling to find participants and would truly appreciate your help; it only takes a few minutes. 👉 You can participate here: shorturl.at/rwwXc 🙏 Feel free to share the link with others. Thank you!
test.uib.es
Breathing Through Your Day: A Brief Reflection Survey
You move, interact, speak, listen, think, and feel. Life unfolds through a rich variety of experiences and tasks.
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Zakaria Djebbara @zakdjebbara.bsky.social · 21/07/2025
Memory is not just in the head. It’s scaffolded by spatial structure. This opens new doors in neuroarchitecture, design psychology, and the science of memory. #Neuroarchitecture #Memory #VR #EmbodiedCognition #EnvironmentalPsychology #Landmarks #EpisodicMemory #SpatialCognition
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Zakaria Djebbara @zakdjebbara.bsky.social · 21/07/2025
🚨 New publication! My PhD student, Dylan Huynh, explored how landmarks and spatial geometry affect episodic memory using immersive VR. We found that people remember better, and learn faster, when the environment around them is distinctive. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
sciencedirect.com
Investigating the effects of landmarks on memory performance
The built environment profoundly influences our brain, shaping how we perceive, remember, and interact with the world around us. Far from serving sole…
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Zakaria Djebbara @zakdjebbara.bsky.social · 16/06/2025
🌊🧠🏛️
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Zakaria Djebbara @zakdjebbara.bsky.social · 14/05/2025
If we argue that we only sense a limited number of things, and that the totality of information is just the possibility space built from those sensory inputs, then we’re essentially restating empiricism. The idea that thoughts are just combinations of sensory types sounds like an echo of empiricism.
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Zakaria Djebbara @zakdjebbara.bsky.social · 14/05/2025
Isn’t that what’s implicitly happening now… Many cognitive neuroscience studies investigate early responses that make up conscious experiences, but interpret them under different frameworks, so they won’t use labels like unconscious.
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Klaus Gramann @mobilebrainimaging.bsky.social · 20/04/2025
I am delighted to announce the upcoming 6th International Mobile Brain/Body Imaging Conference in Berlin, August 26-28, 2026 at the beautiful Hotel Oderberger! More information to follow in the coming weeks. See you in Berlin in 2026! #MobileEEG #MobileBrainImaging #EEG #NIRS #MoBI2026
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Clement Naveilhan @clementnaveilhan.bsky.social · 22/03/2025
Our new preprint is out with @stephen-ramanoel.bsky.social and @mobilebrainimaging.bsky.social !!! 🥳 Combining mobile EEG and Virtual Reality our results highlight multifaceted role of theta activity in the RSC during naturalistic human path integration www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
biorxiv.org
Theta activity supports landmark-based correction of naturalistic human path integration
How do humans integrate landmarks to update their spatial position during active navigation task? Using immersive virtual reality and high-density mobile EEG, we investigated the neural underpinnings ...
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Zakaria Djebbara @zakdjebbara.bsky.social · 11/03/2025
This is amazing work!
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Zakaria Djebbara @zakdjebbara.bsky.social · 11/03/2025
We found that participants consistently prioritized shorter distances over visible destinations, highlighting that cognitive maps might be more influential than visual appearance in navigation decisions.
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Zakaria Djebbara @zakdjebbara.bsky.social · 11/03/2025
In Virtual Reality, freely moving participants navigated a uniform environment (more or less a maze-like environment with no unique features to function as landmarks), with varied distance and visibility to their target.
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Zakaria Djebbara @zakdjebbara.bsky.social · 11/03/2025
Cognitive Maps vs. Visibility 🧠👀 In uncertain environments, how do we make navigation decisions? Is the distance on our mental map more important, or is it the destination's visibility? This study was conducted by architecture students in our science book club! www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
tandfonline.com
Does the visibility of destination matter more than distance in human navigation? A pilot virtual reality study
Navigational decisions depend on both cognitive maps and immediate sensory experiences of the environment. However, when both cognitive maps and immediate sensory experiences are uncertain, it is u...
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Zakaria Djebbara @zakdjebbara.bsky.social · 09/03/2025
Very strange and suspect behaviour from OAP. Some science sleuthing skills in this thread expose their fishy activity. Be careful out there friends!
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Kate Jeffery @katejj.bsky.social · 22/02/2025
This feels like an invitation😁 So... just a heads-up that we are recruiting for 5 positions pretty soon in the area of cognitive/behavioural neuroscience/psychology. Scotland is a beautiful place and we have some amazing science going on here... watch this space!
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Zakaria Djebbara @zakdjebbara.bsky.social · 20/02/2025
Ever wondered whether atmospheres affect your experience of the next space? www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
tandfonline.com
Architectural atmospheres, priming effects and first impressions: a multi-perspective approach integrating self-report assessments and physiological responses
This paper studies the priming effects of architectural atmospheres on our first impressions of space. We applied a multi-perspective approach combining first-person-perspective insights (self-repo...
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George O’Neill @goneill.bsky.social · 18/02/2025
HOT OFF THE PRESS - Back in 2019 we started asking ourselves what could you to demonstrate where werable, OPM-MEG technology could fit into naturalistic #neuroskyence. One snag, we'd have to build the system from scratch first... Anyway its 2025, read the paper here -> doi.org/10.1162/imag...
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Zakaria Djebbara @zakdjebbara.bsky.social · 18/02/2025
Congrats George and team! Hope you’re all doing well
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Zakaria Djebbara @zakdjebbara.bsky.social · 11/02/2025
It gives a nice overview of complexity science and is a good reminder that our fields are just man-made boundaries of natural processes. One should probably strive to become antidisciplinary, really. Great book!
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Zakaria Djebbara @zakdjebbara.bsky.social · 10/02/2025
I’m only a few books in here in 2025, but this one is already a good candidate as my favourite this year!
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Zakaria Djebbara @zakdjebbara.bsky.social · 31/01/2025
Could a linear regression with effect-coding be useful here? That could replace an ANOVA and qualify your post-hoc contrasts 😁
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Ed Baggs @edbaggs.bsky.social · 27/01/2025
🚨 Call for contributions! We are hosting Dimensions of Radical Embodiment 3 at the University of Southern Denmark, Odense, June 18-21, 2025 We are accepting abstract submissions for talks, posters, and brief ideas! Deadline: March 14, 2025 radicalembodiment3.github.io
Poster for workshop: Introduction to cognitive ethnographyPoster for Dimensions of Radical Embodiment 3Poster for workshop on Computational creativity, embodiment, and problem solving
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Hugo Spiers @hugospiers.bsky.social · 27/01/2025
🚨 new publication from our lab in @pnas.org ! "Expert navigators deploy rational complexity–based decision precaching for large-scale real-world planning" Entropy of streets & successor representations explain planning speed Colab wth Daniel McNamee at Champalimaud www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Map of london with the planned routes of 43 taxi drivers overlaid in yellow lines.
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Zakaria Djebbara @zakdjebbara.bsky.social · 26/01/2025
I don’t how these headphones work, but capturing meaningful data around the ears is possible; www.frontiersin.org/journals/neu...
frontiersin.org
Frontiers | Assessing focus through ear-EEG: a comparative study between conventional cap EEG and mobile in- and around-the-ear EEG systems
IntroductionAs our attention is becoming a commodity that an ever-increasing number of applications are competing for, investing in modern day tools and devi...
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Zakaria Djebbara @zakdjebbara.bsky.social · 17/01/2025
📌
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Zakaria Djebbara @zakdjebbara.bsky.social · 17/01/2025
Nice! Love to see RE concepts being tested empirically, and of course with MoBI
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Dio D. Vicen @diovicen.bsky.social · 15/01/2025
New Preprint! 🧐 We explored the ecological idea of resonance using virtual reality and Mobile Brain/Body Imaging (MOBI). It was challenging both technically and in terms of data analysis, but we are quite happy with the results. Check it out! ⬇️ doi.org/10.31234/osf... 1/
doi.org
OSF
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Hugo Spiers @hugospiers.bsky.social · 13/01/2025
🚨 New fMRI preprint from our lab 🚨 "Brain dynamics during architectural experience: prefrontal and hippocampal regions track aesthetics and spatial complexity" Led by Lara Gregorians with co-authors, Zita Patai, Pablo Fernandez Velasco & Fiona Zisch. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #neuroskyence
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Zakaria Djebbara @zakdjebbara.bsky.social · 12/01/2025
Wow! Never heard about this. Thanks for sharing!
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Hugo Spiers @hugospiers.bsky.social · 10/01/2025
Here is the MIT Tech Review article covering the data collection linked to this new Phd Opportunity at our new International Centre for NeuroArchitecture and NeuroDesign: www.technologyreview.com/2024/09/13/1...
technologyreview.com
Neuroscientists and architects are using this enormous laboratory to make buildings better
Creating life-size simulations of the real world can reveal how we, and our minds, respond to the environments around us—and could shape the future of architecture.
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Zakaria Djebbara @zakdjebbara.bsky.social · 10/01/2025
I mean… awesome timing for my preprint 😂
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Zakaria Djebbara @zakdjebbara.bsky.social · 07/01/2025
🧠🏛️ Understanding attentional biases using naturalistic mobile EEG in the built environment. "... active movement through curved corridors reverses the typical spatial attention effect, ... contradicting previous findings from static settings." Turns out mobility matters a great deal!
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Nico Dosenbach @ndosenbach.bsky.social · 02/01/2025
The brain’s action-mode is created by a dedicated action-mode network (AMN) rdcu.be/d5odm. In the brain’s mode continuum, AMN sits opposite DMN’s default-mode, as yin-yang. AMN might be key in pain, apathy, Parkinson’s. New @natrevneurosci.bsky.social w/ Marc Raichle & @gordonneuro.bsky.social 🧵 ⬇️
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Zakaria Djebbara @zakdjebbara.bsky.social · 21/12/2024
"Where do I go? Decoding temporal neural dynamics of scene processing and visuospatial memory interactions using CNNs" from @stephen-ramanoel.bsky.social 's group. Affordances during scene perception processed in early stages (100ms) over occipital cortex. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
biorxiv.org
Where do I go? Decoding temporal neural dynamics of scene processing and visuospatial memory interactions using CNNs
Visual scene perception enables rapid interpretation of the surrounding environment by integrating multiple visual features related to task demands and context, which is essential for goal-directed be...
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Jaan Aru @jaanaru.bsky.social · 12/12/2024
Post-doc position: AI might often enhance natural stupidity But which factors determine whether AI will lead to smarter humans or more natural stupidity? Let's figure it out 👋 🙏 Please repost so I could find someone crazy enough to work w me in Estonia on this✍️ ✉️ #edusky #psychscisky #neuroAI
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René Skukies @theneurocookies.bsky.social · 11/12/2024
‼️New paper‼️ (also a major s-ccs #paper, with Judith Schepers & @benediktehinger.bsky.social) Do you have RTs in your 🧠📈-data? Fixation durations? Movements? How do event-durations affect your data? And how to deal with this? 🧵 ⤵ 1 / 5 biorxiv.org/cgi/content/... 🧪 #EEG #fMRI #neuroimage
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Zakaria Djebbara @zakdjebbara.bsky.social · 07/12/2024
Right, and the conclusion should’ve been that legs are necessary to fulfil the jumping behaviour, which also requires listening (stimulus), learning (motivation), etc. “Jumping” requires a combination/integration of multiple systems. Maybe I’m dragging the example too far…
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Zakaria Djebbara @zakdjebbara.bsky.social · 07/12/2024
Yeah, I’m reminded of the frog scientist. He taught the frog to jump upon command: “jump!” For every jump, he would cut off one of its legs. When cutting off the last leg, the frog couldn’t jump anymore and he concluded “frogs listen with their legs.”
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