Peter de Weerd (P.H.M.)
Research profile
Oct. 1983-Jun. 1985
Undergraduate student at Catholic University of Louvain, BE
Dept. of Psychology, supervision Prof. E. Vandenbussche
Psychophysical study of the visual identification of principal meridians in humans, to test predictions derived from von Helmholtz' horopter theory.
Master’s thesis ’Identification of principal meridians in humans’ (July 1985, 126p).
Oct. 1985-May 1991
Graduate student at Catholic University of Louvain, BE,
Laboratory of Neuro- and Psychophysiolog, Faculty of Medicine, supervision Prof. E. Vandenbussche and Prof. G.A. Orban
Research on contour orientation discrimination in cats, to test effects of different lesions in the visual cortex were for different contour types.
Doctoral thesis ‘Orientation discrimination in the cat: A behavioural study’ (June 1991, 231p).
Oct. 1991-Oct. 1998
Visiting Associate at the NIMH, Bethesda, MD, USA
Laboratory of Brain and Cognition (head Dr. L.G. Ungerleider) and Laboratory of Neuropsychology (head Dr. R. Desimone) Lesion and neurophysiological experiments in animal models and fMRI studies in humans to study early vision, skill learning, and selective attention.
Oct. 1998- Oct 2003
Assistant Professor at the University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA Department of Psychology
Psychophysical and fMRI experiments of early visual processes, and skill learning in visual and motor modalities. Neurophysiological experiments on attention in animal models.
Oct. 2003-Apr 2008
Associate Professor at Maastricht University, NL
Department of Psychology & Neuroscience
Psychophysical, physiological, molecular, and fMRI studies of perception, attention and skill learning. fMRI studies in humans on perceptual filling-in and visual skill learning. Neurophysiological and molecular studies in animal models on neuronal plasticity in skill learning paradigms.
Apr. 2008-current
Professor at Maastricht University, NL
Department of Psychology & Neuroscience
Continuation of above-specified research lines.
Research projects
Personal Grants
1991 Long term fellowship International HFSP
1992 Collen Foundation Award ($12,500)
1999 Small Grants Program University of Arizona ($5,000)
2000 NIH Grant# R01 MH61972-01 ($375,000)
2005 VICI award NWO (€1,250,000)
2005 Open Competition award NWO (€160,000€)
2007 Ph.D fellowship (FCT, Portugal) (€150,000)
2012 Open Competition award NWO (€160,000€)
2014 Human Brain Project network grant (coord., €250,000)
Network Grants
2009 Marie-Curie Neurophysics graduate school
(co-writer and director, 12PhD students, 2postdocs)
2009 NWO Graduate School for Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience
(co-writer and director, 4PhD students)
Internal funding
2014 Maastricht Institute of Advanced Studies (co-writer)
2014 Maastricht Systems Biology (lead-writer)
Recent publications
Other publications
Papers
ORBAN G.A., VANDENBUSSCHE E., SPRAGUE J.M. & DE WEERD P. Stimulus contrast and visual cortical lesions. Experimental Brain Research, 1988, 72: 191-194.
DE WEERD P., VANDENBUSSCHE E. & ORBAN G.A. Speeding up visual discrimination learning in cats by differential exposure of positive and negative stimuli. Behavioural Brain Research, 1990, 36: 1-12.
ORBAN G.A., VANDENBUSSCHE E., SPRAGUE J.M. & DE WEERD P. Orientation discrimination in the cat : a distributed function. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA, 1990, 87: 1134-1138.
DE WEERD P., VANDENBUSSCHE E. & ORBAN G.A. Bar orientation discrimination in the cat. Visual Neuroscience, 1990, 4: 257-268.
DE WEERD P., VANDENBUSSCHE E., DE BRUYN B. & ORBAN G.A. Illusory contour orientation discrimination in the cat. Behavioural Brain Research, 1990, 39: 1-17.
DE WEERD P., VANDENBUSSCHE E. & ORBAN G.A. Staircase procedure and constant stimuli method in cat psychophysics. Behavioural Brain Research, 1990, 40: 201-214.
VANDENBUSSCHE E., SPRAGUE J.M., DE WEERD P. & ORBAN G.A. Orientation discrimination in the cat : its cortical locus .I. Areas 17 and 18. Journal of Comparative Neurology, 1991, 305: 632-658.
DE WEERD P., VANDENBUSSCHE E. & ORBAN G.A. Texture segregation in the cat: a parametric study. Vision Research, 1992, 32 : 305-322.
DE WEERD P., VANDENBUSSCHE E. & ORBAN G.A. Occlusion cues contribute to orientation judgments of occlusion-defined contours. Perception & Psychophysics, 1993, 54 : 706-715.
DE WEERD P., SPRAGUE J.M., RAIGUEL S., VANDENBUSSCHE E. & ORBAN G.A. Effects of visual cortex lesions on orientation discrimination of illusory contours in the cat. European Journal of Neuroscience, 1993, 5: 1695-1710.
DE WEERD P., SPRAGUE J.M., VANDENBUSSCHE E. & ORBAN G.A. Two stages in visual texture segregation: A lesion study in the cat. Journal of Neuroscience, 1994, 14: 929-948.
DE WEERD P., GATTASS R., DESIMONE, R. & UNGERLEIDER L.G. Responses of cells in monkey visual cortex during perceptual filling-in of an artificial scotoma. Nature, 1995, 377: 731-734.
SPRAGUE J.M., DE WEERD P., XIAO D.X., VANDENBUSSCHE E. & ORBAN G.A. Orientation discrimination in the cat : its cortical locus .II. Extrastriate cortical areas. Journal of Comparative Neurology, 1996, 364: 32-50.
DE WEERD P., DESIMONE R. & UNGERLEIDER L.G. Cue dependent deficits in grating orientation discrimination after V4 lesions in macaques. Visual Neuroscience, 1996, 13: 529-538.
DE WEERD P., DESIMONE R. & UNGERLEIDER L.G. Perceptual filling-in: A parametric study. Vision Research, 1998, 38:2721-2734.
KASTNER S., DE WEERD P., DESIMONE R. & UNGERLEIDER L.G. Mechanisms of directed attention in human extrastriate cortex as revealed by functional MRI. Science, 1998, 282: 108-111.
DE WEERD P., DESIMONE R. & UNGERLEIDER L.G. Response to Pessoa and Neumann: A few clarifications. Invited Commentary on PESSOA L. & NEUMANN H. Why does the brain Fill-in? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 1998, 2: 425-426.
GATTASS R. PESSOA L.A., DE WEERD P. & FIORANI M. Filling-in in topographically organized distributed networks. Proceedings of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences, 1998, 70: 1-11.
DE WEERD P. Linking spread of neural activity and filling-in: A few more arguments in favor. Invited Commentary on PESSOA L., THOMPSON E., & NOE A. Finding out about filling-in: A guide to perceptual completion for visual science and the philosophy of perception. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1998, 21: 754-755.
KASTNER S., PINSK M.A., DE WEERD P., DESIMONE R. & UNGERLEIDER L.G. Increased activity in human visual cortex during directed attention in the absence of visual stimulation. Neuron, 1999, 22: 751-761.
DE WEERD P., PERALTA III M.R., DESIMONE R. & UNGERLEIDER L.G. Loss of attentional stimulus selection after extrastriate cortical lesions in macaques. Nature Neuroscience, 1999, 2: 753-758.
KASTNER S., DE WEERD P. & UNGERLEIDER L.G. Texture segregation in the human visual cortex: A functional MRI study. Journal of Neurophysiology, 2000, 83: 2453-2457.
KASTNER S., DE WEERD P., PINSK M.A., ELIZONDO M.I., DESIMONE R. & UNGERLEIDER L.G. MODULATION OF SENSORY SUPPRESSION: Implication for receptive field sizes in the human visual cortex. Journal of Neurophysiology, 2001, 86: 1398-1411.
PINAUD R., DE WEERD P., CURRIE W., FIORANI M. Jr., HESS, F.F., & TREMERE, L.A. NGFI-A Immunoreactivity in the Primate Retina: Implications for Genetic Regulation of Plasticity. International Journal of Neuroscience, 2003, 113:1275-85.
DE WEERD P., DESIMONE R. & UNGERLEIDER L.G. Generalized deficit in visual selective attention after V4 and TEO lesions in macaques. European Journal of Neuroscience, 2003, 18: 1671-1691.
De Weerd P., Reinke K., Ryan L., McIsaac T., Perschler p., Schnyer d., Trouard t., and Gmitro A. Cortical Mechanisms for Acquisition and Performance of Bimanual Motor Sequences. NeuroImage, 2003, 19: 1405-16.
DE WEERD P., DESIMONE R. & UNGERLEIDER L.G. Impairments in spatial generalization of visual skills after V4 and TEO lesions in macaques. Behavioral Neuroscience, 2003, 117: 1441-1474.
BERTINI G., BUFFALO E.A., DE WEERD P., DESIMONE R. & UNGERLEIDER L.G. Visual responses to targets and distracters by inferior temporal neurons after lesions of extrastriate areas V4 and TEO. Neuroreport, 2004, 15: 1611-1615.
BLES M., SCHWARZBACH J., DE WEERD P., GOEBEL R. & JANSMA B.M. Receptive field size dependent attention effects in simultaneously presented stimulus displays. Neuroimage, 2006, 30: 506-511.
DE WEERD P., SMITH E. & GREENBERG P. Effect of selective attention on perceptual filling-in. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 2006, 18: 335-347.
DE WEERD P. Perceptual filling-in: More than the eye can see. Progress in Brain Research, 2006, 154: 227-245.
JANS B., PETERS J. & DE WEERD P. Divided attention: The Jury is still out. Psychological Review, 2010, 117(2):637-682.
JANS B., PETERS J. & DE WEERD P. Postscript: Split attention? The data remain difficult to interpret. Psychological Review, 2010, 117(2):682-684.
PETERS, J.C., JANS B., VAN DE VEN, V., DE WEERD, P., GOEBEL, R. Dynamic brightness induction in V1: Analyzing simulated and empirically acquired fMRI data in a "common brain space" framework.. Human Brain Mapping, 2010, 52(3): 973-984.
VALLES A., BOENDER A.J., GIJBERS S., HAAST R.A.M., MARTENS G.J.M., & DE WEERD P. Genome-wide analysis of rat barrel cortex reveals time- and cell-specific changes in gene expression related to somatosensory information processing and neuronal plasticity. Journal of Neuroscience, 2011, 31(16): 6140-6158.
BEEN, M., JANS, B., & DE WEERD P. Time-limited consolidation and task interference: No direct link. Journal of Neuroscience, 2011, 31(42):14944 – 14951.
DE WEERD P. Brightness induction: A study of correlates of surface brightness in early visual areas. Chinese Journal of Psychology, 2011, 53(4): 429-435.
ZIMMERMAN, J., ROEBROECK, A., ULUDAG, K., SACK, A., FORMISANO, E., JANSMA, B., DE WEERD, P., & GOEBEL, R. Network-based statistics for a community driven transparent publication process. Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience, 2011, 6(11): 1-6.
VAN DE VEN V., JANS B., GOEBEL R. & DE WEERD, P. Seeing surfaces: Early visual cortex signals brightness induced by context. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 2012, 24(2): 367-377.
DE WEERD, P., REITHLER J., VAN DE VEN, V., BEEN, M., JACOBS, C., SACK, A. Post-training transcranial magnetic stimulation of striate cortex disrupts consolidation early in visual skill learning. Journal of Neuroscience, 2012, 32(6): 1981-1988. [selected by Faculty of 1000]
GRAEWE, B., DE WEERD, P., FARIVAR, R., CASTELO-BRANCO, M. Stimulus-specificity of object-evoked responses in human visual cortex: An inverse problem for category specificity. PLoS One, 2012, 7(2): e30727.
BONIZZI, p., KAREL, j., DE WEERD, P., LOWET, E., ROBERTS, M., WESTRA, R., MESTE, O., & PEETERS, R. Singular spectrum analysis improves analysis of local field potentials from Macaque V1 in active fixation task. IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology, 2012.
MUR, M., RUFF, D.A., BODURKA, J., DE WEERD, P., BANDETTINI, P.A., & KRIEGESKORTE, N. Single-image activation of human category-selective regions. Journal of Neuroscience, 2012, 32(25), 8649-8662.
BOSMAN, C.A., SCHOFFERELEN, J.M., BRUNET, N., OOSTENVELD, R., BASTOS, A.M., WOMELSDORF, T., RUBEHN, B., STIEGLITZ, T., DE WEERD, P., & FRIES, P. Attentional stimulus selection through selective synchronization between monkey visual areas. Neuron, 2012, 75: 875-888.
LEY., A., VROOMEN, J., HAUSFELD, G., VALENTE, DE WEERD, P., & FORMISANO, E. Learning of new sound categories shapes neural response patterns in human auditory cortex. Journal of Neuroscience, 2012; 32(38):13273-80.
BONIZZI, P., KAREL, J., DE WEERD, P., LOWET, E., ROBERTS, M., WESTRA, R., MESTE, O., & PEETERS, R. Singular spectrum analysis improves analysis of local field potentials from macaque V1 in active fixation task. Conference Proceedings IEEE English Medical Biological Society, 2012, 2945-2948.
GRAEWE, B. LEMOS, R., FERRIER, C., SANTANA, I., FARIVAR, R., DE WEERD, P., & CASTELO-BRANCO M. Impaired processing of 3D Motion-defined faces in Mild Cognitive Impairment and Healthy Aging: An fMRI study. Cerebral Cortex, 2013, 23(10), 2489-2499.
SEIRAFI, M., DE WEERD, P., & DE GELDER, B. Emotion categorization does not depend on explicit face categorization. Journal of Vision, 2013, 13(2), 1-9.
ROBERTS, M., LOWET, E., BRUNET, N.M., TER WAL, M., TIESINGA, P., FRIES, P., & DE WEERD P. Robust gamma coherence between macaque V1 and V2 by dynamic frequency matching. Neuron, 2013, 78, 523-536. [selected by Faculty of 1000]
BRUNET, N., BOSMAN, C.A., ROBERTS, M., OOSTENVELD, R., WOMELSDORF, T., DE WEERD, P. & FRIES, P. Visual cortical gamma band activity during free viewing of natural images. Cerebral Cortex, 2013, Epub ahead of publishing.
BRUNET, N., BOSMAN, C.A., VINCK, M., ROBERTS, M., OOSTENVELD, R., DESIMONE, R., DE WEERD, P., & FRIES, P. Stimulus repetition modulates gamma-band synchronization in primate visual cortex. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 2014, 111(9):3623-3613.
VALLES, A., MARTENS, G.J.M., DE WEERD, P., POELMANS, G., & ASCHAFRI, A. MicroRNA-137 regulates a glucocorticoid receptor-dependent signaling network: implications for schizophrenia etiology. Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience, 2014, accepted.
VALLES, A., GRANIC, I., DE WEERD, P., & MARTENS, G. Molecular correlates of cortical network modulation by long-term sensory experience in the adult rat barrel cortex. Learning and Memory, 2014, accepted.
SEIRAFI, M., DE WEERD, P. & DE GELDER, B. Suppression of face perception during saccadic eye movements. Journal of Ophthalmology, 2014, accepted.
OKAZAKI,Y.O., DE WEERD, P., HAEGENS, S., JENSEN, O. Hemispheric lateralization of posterior alpha reduces distracter interference during face matching. Brain Research, 2014, accepted.
Books
PESSOA L.& DE WEERD P. (Eds.). Filling-in: From Perceptual Completion to Skill Learning. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2003.
PINAUD R, TREMERE L. & DE WEERD P. (Eds.). Plasticity in the visual system: From genes to circuits. NY, Springer, 2006.
Chapters
ORBAN G.A., DE WEERD P. & VANDENBUSSCHE E. Cats discriminate orientations of illusory contours. In : Comparative Perception, Vol. II : Complex Signals. W.C. Stebbins & M.A. Berkley (Eds.). John Wiley & Sons, 1990, pp. 157-185.
SPRAGUE J.M., DE WEERD P., VANDENBUSSCHE E. & ORBAN G.A. Orientation discrimination in the cat and its cortical loci. In : Progress in Brain Research, Vol. 95. T.P. Hicks, S. Molotchnikoff and T. Ono (Eds.). Elsevier Science Publishers B.V., 1993, pp 381-400.
KASTNER S., DE WEERD P. & UNGERLEIDER L.G. Cortical mechanisms of visuospatial attention in humans and monkeys. In: Proceedings of the 4th DeLange Conference, 2003.
DE WEERD P. The neural basis of attention. In: Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science. Nature Publishing Group, 2003.
DE WEERD P. The occipital lobe. In: Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science. Nature Publishing Group, 2003.
SPILLMAN L. & DE WEERD P. Mechanisms of Surface Completion: Perceptual Filling-in of Texture. In: Filling-in: From Perceptual Completion to Skill Learning. Pessoa L. & De Weerd P. (Eds.). Oxford University Press, 2003.
DE WEERD P. & PESSOA L. Filling-in: More than meets the eye. In: Filling-in: From Perceptual Completion to Skill Learning. Pessoa L.& De Weerd P. (Eds.). Oxford University Press, 2003.
Tremere L.A, Pinaud R. & De WEERD P. Contributions of Inhibitory Mechanisms to Perceptual Completion. In: Filling-in: From Perceptual Completion to Skill Learning. Pessoa L.& De Weerd P. (Eds.). Oxford University Press, 2003.
DE WEERD P., PINAUD R. & BERTINI G. Plasticity in V1 induced by perceptual learning. In: Plasticity in the visual system: From genes to circuits: Pinaud L., Tremere L. & De Weerd P. (Eds.). NY, Springer, 2006.
DE WEERD P., PINAUD R. & TREMERE L. Introduction to plasticity in the visual system. In: Plasticity in the visual system: From genes to circuits: Pinaud L., Tremere L. & De Weerd P. (Eds.). NY, Springer, 2006.
TREMERE L., DE WEERD P. & PINAUD R. A unified theoretical frmaework for plasticity in visual circuitry. In: Plasticity in the visual system: From genes to circuits: Pinaud L., Tremere L. & De Weerd P. (Eds.). NY, Springer, 2006.
KASTNER S., DE WEERD P. & UNGERLEIDER L.G. Cortical mechanisms of visuospatial attention in humans and monkeys. In: Pomerantz J.R. & Crair M.C. (Eds.) Topics in integrative neuroscience: From cells to cognition; Cambridge University Press, 2007.
GOEBEL R., & DE WEERD, P. Perceptual Filling-in: From Experimental Data to Neural Network Modeling. In: Gazzaniga M.S. (Ed.) The cognitive neuropsciences, MIT press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2009, pp435-453.