Sander Martens PhD

Sander Martens was an undergraduate student of cognitive science at Radboud University, Nijmegen, when he became intrigued by the attentional blink phenomenon, during an internship at the MRC-Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit (Cambridge, UK) under the supervision of Prof. John Duncan. He obtained his PhD at Leiden University in 2001, and as a postdoctoral fellow he continued to work on this topic using magnetoencephalography at the Heinrich-Heine University, Düsseldorf, Germany, and electroencephalography (EEG) at the University of Groningen. After receiving a Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research grant (NWO-VENI) in 2004, he started working at the Neuroimaging Centre (NiC) and joined the group of Prof. André Aleman as an Assistant Professor in 2007. He is head of the EEG and near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) laboratories and board member of the NiC, principal investigator within the Research School of Behavioural and Cognitive Neurosciences (BCN) and editor-in-chief of the BCN Newsletter.

His research focuses on individual differences in temporal attention within and across sensory modalities using behavioural experiments in combination with pupil dilation deconvolution, EEG and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). Current topics of interest include the effects of training, emotion, physical fitness and ageing on the efficiency of selective attention.

• All Publications: mepa page or  pdf Selected Publications:

  1. Martens, S., Munneke, J., Smid, H., & Johnson, A. (2006) Quick minds don’t blink: Electrophysiological correlates of individual differences in attentional selection. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.
  2. Willems, C., Damsma, A., Wierda, S. M., Taatgen, N., & Martens, S. (2015) Training-induced changes in the dynamics of attention as reflected in pupil dilation. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.
  3. De Jong, P. J., Koster, E. H. W., Wessel, I., Künzli, A., Ruiter, M., & Martens, S. (2014). Distinct temporal processing of task-irrelevant facial expressions. Emotion.
  4. Goerlich, K. S., Witteman, J., Schiller, N., van Heuven, V.J., Aleman, A., & Martens, S. (2014) Blunted Feelings: Alexithymia is Associated with a Diminished Neural Response to Speech Prosody. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.
  5. Tumati, S., Martens, S., & Aleman, A. (2013). Magnetic resonance spectroscopy in mild cognitive impairment: Systematic review and meta-analysis. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews
  6. Wierda, S. M., van Rijn, H., Taatgen, N., & Martens, S. (2012) Pupil dilation deconvolution reveals the dynamics of attention at high temporal resolution. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, USA
  7. Goerlich, K. S., Witteman, J., Schiller, N., van Heuven, V.J., Aleman, A., & Martens, S. (2012). The Nature of affective priming in music and speech. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.
  8. Martens, S., & Wyble, B. (2010) The attentional blink: Past, present, and future of a blind spot in perceptual awareness. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews.
  9. Taatgen, N. A., Juvina, I., Schipper, M., Borst, J., & Martens, S. (2009) Too much control can hurt: A threaded cognition model of the attentional blink. Cognitive Psychology.
  10. Duncan, J., Martens, S., & Ward, R. (1997). Restricted attentional capacity within but not between sensory modalities. Nature.