People

Yaron Caspi, Ph.D.

Originally, I came from Israel, but I became Dutch, and currently, I am learning to love Taiwan.

 My main interest is in the biological correlates of conscious perception. By that, I mean that consciousness is not just an abstract phenomenal concept. Nor do I believe it is all about neuronal spiking and connectivity. In reality, our brains are biological organs, and our conscious perception is a product of our biological brain. 

Biology, however, is an intricate process that operates on various levels (from DNA to cells to the interaction with other parts of our body). Our biology (both nature and nurture - not just one or the other) dictates who we are, and most probably also dictates our conscious perception. 

Thus, biology should correlate with the existing individual differences in conscious perception. We can use the individual differences in conscious perception as a gate to understand how biology correlates with our conscious perception (and maybe even causes it).

If you find it interesting, please look at the Research page, where you can learn more about my project.   

Francis Pingfan Chien

I am currently a research assistant at National Taiwan University. I graduated from National Taiwan University, where I majored in Psychology, Neuroscience and Political Science. I am interested in utilizing multiple approaches to understand human behavior and decipher the brain function of learning and information seeking. Recently, I am studying how our beliefs change on controversial issues after viewing the naturalistic stimuli and what’s the neural correlate of this updating.

Han, Yun-An (韓昀安)

I am a graduate student in the BAC lab, but my research interest is very different from the others. Combining my professional training in cognitive psychology with my personal enthusiasm for violin playing and classical music, my main research interest is music perception/cognition. The proposal that I have been working on currently is to use fMRI to investigate the representation of melody transposition invariance in the human cortex.

Chun-Te Wang (王淳得)

Currently, I’m a master student in BAC lab. I’m interested in self-awareness, especially metacognition. To be specific, my research aims to use behavioral and neurocognitive approaches to understand whether we preserve metacognitive ability under being unaware of the visual experience. Besides academic life, I’m also a sci-fi movie & jazz music enthusiast.

If you’re interested in metacognition, or if you love music in whatever genre, feel free to contact me.

Chia-Yu Hu (胡家毓)

I am interested in exploring how human thoughts change dynamically. I intend to learn the skills of designing experiments and brain imaging techniques from working with Professor Hsieh. I am hoping to improve these research skills and understand more about human thoughts during the period in the BAC lab.  

De-Wei Dai (戴得偉) 

My master’s thesis focuses on how visual information and its interaction with other sensory modalities influence our perception of time during voluntary action.

I’m passionate about innovating behavioral paradigms and the methodology of psychophysics, which I believe are the cornerstones for the investigation of consciousness and cognition.

If you are interested in my project, or simply enjoy crafted beer and great music, feel free to contact me.

https://deweidai.com/

Yung-Yi Hsu (徐永一)

I am interested in the unconscious processing in our brains. 

In particular, I am curious about what our brains can do without consciousness.

I want to know what kind of information can be processed when the stimulus is unconsciously presented.

Currently, I am studying the unconscious component of memorability. More precisely, I want to know whether memorability is related to other properties of visual stimuli, and can memorability information of visual stimuli be processed and cause different results when it is presented unconsciously.

Han-Yun Tai (戴含芸)

As a master's student in the lab, I’m interested in unraveling the intricacies of human thoughts and behaviors, delving into the underlying brain mechanisms. Specifically, my research centers on exploring the variations in autobiographical memory capacity among individuals and its interplay with different forms of memory.

Ning-Ting Michelyne Hsu （許寧庭）

My research focuses on understanding brain mechanisms underlying consciousness, particularly in emotion, ensemble perception, and mental disorders. I investigate how the brain regulates emotional responses, examining neural and psychological processes to uncover their influence on conscious experience and behavior. Additionally, I study ensemble perception to understand how the brain integrates information from multiple stimuli into coherent representations, exploring cognitive mechanisms involved in summarizing group properties. This research aims to elucidate the role of these perceptual processes in attention and memory, providing insights into how they contribute to conscious awareness.

Grace Hung（洪子媛）

I am a research visiting student in the BAC lab and currently a member of the class of 2026, on track to complete my undergraduate degree at UCSD. My academic journey has been inspired by my involvement in various cognitive psychology research labs at NTU, where I have explored a range of intriguing topics.

Currently, I am continuing my independent research at the NTU Brain and Consciousness Lab, focusing on the intricacies of attention styles, thinking styles, and their relationship to creativity. This research aims to understand how these cognitive factors influence creative processes. I am excited about the next steps, which involve training cognitive techniques or priming methods to maximize creativity.

 Yu-An Chen (陳宇安）

I am working with Dr. Hsieh to elucidate the harms and benefits of mind-wandering on working memory. I am also interested in the phenomenal properties of cognitive processes, like the vividness of episodic memory and dream. I also intend to use computational approaches of fMRI analysis to bridge the gap between the neural representations and the phenomenal contents of working memory, mental imagery, and bottom-up process.

Shao Chi Chiu (邱少齊 )

Studying undergraduate school at National Taiwan University, I delved deeply into philosophy, specializing in the philosophy of mind. Continuing my academic pursuit, I joined the Institute of Philosophy of Mind and Cognition at National Yang-Ming-Chiao-Tung University, under the supervision of Ying-Tung Lin. My graduate studies are centered on the philosophy of memory.

In collaboration with my second supervisor, Brown, I have been actively involved in empirical research on observer perspective memory. This work aims to bridge philosophical theories with empirical evidence, challenging existing philosophical positions and seeking to verify or falsify them through experimental approaches.

Currently, I am working as a research assistant with Yaron, a talented scholar in Brown's lab. Apart from that, I keep further exploring observer perspective memory, aiming to invigorate philosophical studies with new experimental insights.

Tony Cheng, Ph.D.

I am an assistant professor at the Department of Philosophy, the director of Center for Phenomenology, and a research fellow at Research Center for Mind, Brain and Learning, at NCCU, Taiwan. I am also the founder of Taiwan Intercollegiate Consciousness Society. My areas of research include perception, attention, metacognition, consciousness, and self-consciousness. For more information, please see www.tonycheng.net.

Yun-Jie Christina, Wu (吳筠潔)

I am interested in discovering the differences between conscious and unconscious recognition. I am working with Dr. Hsieh to study the brain representations of both conscious and unconscious recognition with fMRI analysis. I wish to enhance not only my critical thinking skills but further my understanding of consciousness by answering the differences between conscious and unconscious information processing as a graduate student.

Yu-Hsin Lee (李宇昕)

Tech/ photo enthusiast more than anything, always on the lookout for the next new and exciting thing to try. After two transfers, I obtained my B.Sc. in Interdisciplinary Life Sciences (w/ Philosophy minor) plus a lasting interest in human consciousness from National Tsing Hua University. Now, hard at work studying human rhythmic unconscious processing, visual illusions, and eye-tracking techniques. For a glimpse into some of the physical representations of my visual experience, check out the Instagram handle lyhhyl.

熊品程

I graduated from NTU PSY, and continue getting my Master's degree at BAC lab. I am interested in human's incredible capacity for cognition and perception. How we process information from the world, how we use language, how we think, and how we have consciousness are the questions I want to ask. Looking forward to exploring more about the human mind.

Joan (Yi) Lin（林懿）

I am interested in understanding how we humans perceive the same world but have different experiences. In particular, I am curious about what influences our perceptual process, how to model individual brain activation and behavior during perception, and even predict future perceptual performance.

I am also interested in developing medical applications based on brain research. I worked on auditory biomarkers and the methodology of speech decoders.

Xin-Rong, Yang (楊欣蓉)

My main research interest is in human decision-making and investigating related topics with experimental psychology methods. For example, I am right now working with Professor Hsieh to look into how the feeling of scarcity affects human perception and cognition. In other words, I would like to know if feelings of a lack of resources or a low social-economics status could influence fundamentally how physical sensory inputs are processed and organized in the brain. 

Yen-Kuan Chen （陳彥匡）

I am interested in questions of how human beings face the world, and hope to answer them with brain and data science. Currently focusing on neuroscience and mental health issues.

 Joo Tan,  Ph.D.

What makes us humans tick has always intrigued me. Having spent the better part of my undergraduate studies immersed in the world of molecules and cells, it’s inevitable that I start to wonder about the events happening on a larger scale. I’m hoping that through my time as a graduate student, I’ll gain a deeper appreciation of what makes us who we are and how we interact with the world that we live in.

 Pin-Kwang (PK) Tan

INS Graduate Student, Seidemann Lab

Egor Ananyev ,  Ph.D.

I am working with Dr. Brown Hsieh and Dr. Trevor Penney on investigating visual processing, visual mental imagery, and cortical organization of visual pathways using behavioral techniques and neuroimaging. I am interested in how imagination, attention, and consciousness interact with visual processing, and how different factors -- internal (experience, expectations) and external (too much or too little information) -- affect these relationships. My prior experience includes investigating vision loss with head- and eye-tracking and virtual environments (with Dr. Eliezer Peli), and using artificial neural networks to evaluate neurological damage to the visual system (with Dr. Stephen Kosslyn).

Chun Siong Soon,  Ph.D.

My main interest is in uncovering information that does not have a direct behavioural correlation with covert human brain activity. Specifically, I would like to decode functional signatures that dissociate between conscious and unconscious neural activity.

Currently, I am using multivariate pattern classification techniques to show that pre-stimulus attention can create target-specific biases in visual processing areas, thereby enhancing object recognition performance under challenging conditions. I am adapting this paradigm to study how sleep deprivation affects such object-based attention.

About me: genetically predisposed to oxymoronism; religious unbeliever; lazy perfectionist; nerdy (hokkien) beng; photo-phobic photographer (I love taking photographs but not looking at them; I have not seen about 10 thousand photographs that I’ve taken); a vegetarian 95% of the time – whenever I'm not eating; a carnivore 5% of the time – whenever I’m eating.

Sei Hwan Oh,  Ph.D.

I investigate characteristics of attention and memory, using a combination of behavioral methods and brain imaging techniques.

Yu-Feng (Evan) Huang,  Ph.D. (Personal Website)

I am interested in how modern technologies influence people's mind/brain. My recent work focuses on the neurophysiological investigation of peoples' perception and evaluation of Internet stimuli. Additionally, I work on issues of electronic commerce, including consumer decision strategies, information presentations, and moral judgments.

Rachit Dubey (Personal Website)

My goal is to improve our understanding of the human brain to build more intelligent systems. The questions that motivate me include: how do humans learn so effectively? How do we process any given visual stimulus so efficiently? How do we combine knowledge from two seemingly different domains? To answer these questions I am interested in computational models of cognition, knowledge acquisition, visual cognition and machine learning.

G.C. Chen

National Tsing Hua University

2011, MS in Computer Science

As Mr. Knuth ever said, programming is the art. I am interested in solving realistic problems by programming and on the way to be an artiest. My familiar fields are networking, multimedia and embedded system. Now I am involved in using various computing approaches to simulate problems and discover the unknown field of cognitive science.

Georg was a research assistant in the lab from 2011-2012. He is currently a graduate student at University of Tokyo studying brain and computer interface technology.