Matthias Nau

Cognitive neuroscientist at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands



Welcome to my website

I am an Assistant Professor of Computational Cognitive Neuroscience at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. My research seeks to understand the general principles underlying vision, memory, and imagery on the level of brain activity and behavior.

While writing these lines, I am experiencing the present moment visually. Later, when I recall it, my mental imagery will resemble this present moment (e.g., seeing a laptop and plants in my “mind’s eye”). I believe that by studying the neural and behavioral patterns shared between these moments, we can learn how visual experiences are constructed in both.

Solving this puzzle is important not only for understanding human cognition in health and disease, but also for advancing technologies such as human-like AI. Therefore, my work probes this idea through a combination of naturalistic multi-task studies and virtual reality with neuroimaging (e.g., fMRI) and behavioral tracking (e.g., eye tracking). In addition, I develop open-access resources to enhance how human behavior can be measured in neuroimaging with machine learning.

Education & Experience

Since 01/2024 - Assistant Professor of Computational Cognitive Neuroscience
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Section of Cognitive Psychology, Amsterdam, NL.

11/2020 - 12/2023 - Postdoctoral researcher
National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), Laboratory of Brain and Cognition (LBC), Bethesda, MD, USA. PI: Christopher I. Baker
Supported by a Feodor Lynen Research Fellowship by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation .

01/2020 - 10/2020 - Postdoctoral researcher
Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience, Centre for Neural Computation, NTNU, Trondheim, Norway. PI: Christian F. Doeller

09/2016 - 01/2020 - PhD Candidate
Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience, Centre for Neural Computation, NTNU, Trondheim, Norway. PI: Christian F. Doeller

04/2016 - 08/2016 - Research Assistant
Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition & Behaviour, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. PI: Christian F. Doeller

11/2014 - 03/2016 - Research Assistant
Werner Reichardt Centre for Integrative Neuroscience, Tübingen, Germany. PI: Andreas Bartels

11/2014 - Master of Science
University of Tübingen, Neurobiology, Tübingen, Germany.


04/2019 - 04/2023 - Guest researcher
Max-Planck-Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany.

11/2014 - 03/2016 - Guest researcher
Max-Planck-Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany.