I work at the intersection of vision science and language science, and I'm interested in uncovering shared and unique neuro-cognitive computations/principles in human cognition, on the fronts of object representation, aesthetic appreciation, and memory.
My name is Xinchi YU. I am currently a guest scientist working with Ernst Pöppel. I obtained my PhD at the University of Maryland, supervised by Ellen Lau, where I was also working closely with Weizhen (Zane) Xie.
I consider myself as a very collaborative person and I really enjoy collaborating: that's where fun new ideas emerge and grow! Feel free to reach out to me if my skillset (EEG/SQUID- and OPM-MEG/eye-tracking etc.), expertise or even discussing together could benefit your work!
Name pronunciation: If you happen to speak Mandarin, you would know how to pronounce it (xīnchí; ㄒㄧㄣ ㄔˊ). But if you don't, please feel free to pronounce it as "Shinchee": as long as your pronunciation could act as a strong-enough cue to identify this specific person (namely myself), it doesn't really matter how you actually pronounce it. My family name could be easier to pronounce; if you happen to speak German or French or Finnish, it's that ü (German) or u (French) or y (Finnish) thing. By the way my family name means "at" in modern Chinese; I have no idea why my family name is a preposition but well you know that's life. 😐
My interest and training in both vision science 👀 and language science 🧏 have prompted me to work across both fields, with the goal of bringing insights of one to the other (and vice versa), since the two fields are sociologically distinct but science-wise rather relevant. A very simple demonstration is that we are comprehending the "semantics" of both linguistic and visual input. My overarching research theme is to use VISION and LANGUAGE to uncover shared and unique neuro-cognitive computations/principles in human COGNITION. Specifically, I'm now working on the following research topics:
(1) Working memory (or short-term memory) [vision] [language]
Yu & Lau, 2023, Cognitive Science
Yu, Li, Zhu, Tian & Lau, 2024, Frontiers in Neuroscience
Yu & Lau, 2025, Visual Cognition
Yu, 2025, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
Yu & Lau, in press, Cerebral Cortex
(2) Short - long term memory interactions[vision] [language]
Yu, Thakurdesai & Xie, 2025, Journal of Experimental Psychology: HPP
(3) Empirical aesthetics[vision] [language]
Sütterlin & Yu, 2021, PsyCh Journal
Yu, Pöppel, Zhan & Bao, 2024, Cognitive Processing
Yu, Raghavan, Niu, Bao, Pöppel & Xie, 2025 preprint
(4) Perception and moment-to-moment processing[vision] [language]
Bao+, Zhou+, Yu, Mao, Gutyrchik, Logothetis & Pöppel, 2024, PsyCh Journal
Yu, 2026, Nature Reviews Psychology
Yu, Türk, Dods, Tian & Lau, 2025 preprint
(5) Neurolinguistics[language]
Yu, Mancha, Tian & Lau, 2026, Cognitive Science
(6) OPM-MEG[neuroscience technology]
Yu+, Zhang+, Carey, Pöppel, Lau+ & Sander+, 2026, Biomedical Signal Processing and Control
You might feel that my work spans a wide range of topics, but with some unifying themes: I want my work to help different fields to talk to & offer insights to each other in interesting and meaningful ways.
🏙️Where I'm from: I was born in Northeast China, with another name of Dongbei (you might be more familiar with the geographic name Manchuria). That's a "weird" place in Asia where the signature foods include sauerkraut (made from Napa cabbage but taste exactly the same as the European ones), braised Schweinshaxe and kielbasa. I will be constantly updating this page where I would recommend musicians (and maybe beyond) from our region: Enjoy! :)
👥Promoting mutual understanding beyond academia: I was a section leader of JING Forum 2017, a student forum between Peking University and the University of Tokyo, which was launched in some of the worst years of Sino-Japanese relationship. Beside Mandarin and English, I can also read and speak Japanese. I think mutual understanding is extremely important and is something that I want to promote, including and beyond across different subfields of cognitive (neuro-)science. (see my "philosophy").
