The Nordic Vision Science Network was founded early in 2024 with a special symposium at the 4th Nordic Neuroscience Meeting hosted in Copenhagen. While several of the founding members regularly met at conferences like VSS and ECVP, the Nordic Neuroscience Meeting included a special symposium on Vision Science which became the official launch of a Nordic Network within Vision Science. While this became the formal launch of the network, a handfull of founding members decided on establishing the collaborative network at a joint dinner at Bistro Pastis before the conference start. Here Árni Kristjánsson and Sabrina Hansmann-Roth participated from the Icelandic Vision Lab, Andrey Chetverikov from Bergen University, and Aurore Zelazny and Thomas Alrik Sørensen from Centre for Cognitive Science at Aalborg University. 

The aim is to strengthen Nordic collaboration and Vision science broadly, as there is a strong geographical benefit from the region. 

The initial symposium at the Nordic Neuroscience Meeting was titled "The Neuroscience of Vision", which was chaired by Ms Aurore Zelazny and Professor Árni Kristiánsson, and included three speakers demonstrating the diversity of Nordic vision science:

Professor  Søren Krogh Andersen from University of Southern Denmark with the talk entitled "Can we selectively ignore visual stimuli? Electrophysiological investigations of attentional enhancement and suppression".

Assistant professor Sabrina Hansmann-Roth from University of Iceland with a talk entitled "How uncertainty in mental representations shape visual perception by".

Associate Professor Andrey Chetverikov from University of Bergen with the talk "Decoding of motion direction from trial-by-trial activity in human visual cortex by".

Following the NNM symposium we continued to with a small two-day symposium on Synaesthesia, Perception, and Individual differences, which gathered a number of Nordic researchers as well as researchers from around the globe. The Nordic speakers included:

Associate professor Thomas Alrik Sørensen from Aalborg University with the talk "Is synaesthesia a perceptual/cognitive strategy?".

Professor Heiða María Sigurðardóttir from University of Iceland with the talk "Mapping and tracking visual object representations: Individual abilities and disabilities".

Assistant professor Inga María Ólafsdóttir from Reykjavik University with the talk "Why is a raven like a writing desk? The effects of visuo-semantic clashes on object discrimination and classification".

Ms Aurore Zelazny from Aalborg University with the talk "The effect of ascending and descending presentation on pitch-color associations".

Professor  Søren Krogh Andersen from University of Southern Denmark with the talk "Visual attention in dynamic scenes: electrophysiological investigations of multiple object tracking".

Associate professor Árni Gunnar Ásgerisson from Akureyri University with the talk "Statistical regularities guide attentional orienting".

On January 6th 2025 we launched the first version of our webpage which we will use as an information hub for the Nordic Vision Science Network - both for existing members and potential new members of the network.

The first official meeting in the NVSN was held in Bergen June 3. to 6. 2025 organised by Andrey Chetverikov, Vebjørn Ekroll, Melika Miralem, and Subhankar Karmakar.