On the morning of November 20, 2025, the 138th session of the Gao Juefu Psychology Lecture was held in Room 108 of the School of Psychology at Nanjing Normal University. The lecture, titled “Seeing and Thinking: Recent Evidence from Visual Cognitive Neuroscience,” was delivered by Professor Marius V. Peelen from the Radboud University, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition, and Behavior in the Netherlands. Hosted by the School of Psychology at Nanjing Normal University and chaired by Professor Gao Chuanji, the event drew a large audience of faculty and students who actively participated in the discussion.

 

Professor Marius V. Peelen is a professor and doctoral supervisor at the Radboud University Institute for Brain, Cognition, and Behavior in the Netherlands. His research reveals how the brain establishes connections between visual perception and cognition—the neural mechanisms underlying the transition from seeing to thinking. He leads major funding projects including the EU ERC Consolidator Grant and the NWO Vici Grant, and has guided students to secure multiple Marie Curie research fellowships. His findings have been published in high-impact journals such as Nature, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, Nature Reviews Psychology, Nature Human Behavior, Neuron, Current Biology, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, and PNAS. He serves as an academic editor for prestigious publications including Science Advances.

 

During the lecture, Professor Peelen explored the relationship between vision and cognition in depth. He systematically explained how vision and cognition are deeply integrated through the higher visual cortex. He emphasized that visual perception is an active inferential process, highly dependent on context, memory, goals, and intentions, manifesting as the prioritized representation of task-relevant information in the visual cortex. Simultaneously, the visual cortex can also be top-down activated by purely internal thought, enabling “visual thinking.” This creates a dynamic competitive relationship between internal thought and external perception, jointly shaping our visual experience.

 

The lecture concluded with an in-depth discussion between Professor Marius V. Peelen and the audience. Attendees posed multiple questions on topics including the impact of conceptual training on early visual processing, the importance of using AI models to study natural scenes, and experimental control. The professor provided detailed responses and encouraged scholars to further explore the potential and development of this field. The lecture concluded successfully with a summary by Professor Gao Chuanji and warm applause from the participants.