Mark Lescroart

Mark Lescroart is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Nevada, Reno, where he leads the Pieces of Mind Lab. He joined the Cognitive & Brain Sciences group in 2018 after completing a Ph.D. in Neuroscience at the University of Southern California (2011) under Irving Biederman and postdoctoral research with Jack Gallant at UC Berkeley. His research focuses on how the brain transforms visual stimuli into cognitive representations of objects, spatial relationships, and human actions. He teaches Measuring the Human Brain (PSY 413).

Education

• Ph.D. in Neuroscience, University of Southern California, 2011
• B.S. in Psychobiology, University of Southern California, 2002

Research Interests

Dr. Lescroart’s lab develops computational models of fMRI responses to decode brain activity during visual perception. Key areas include object identity/shape encoding, spatial structure interpretation, and action recognition. Techniques involve voxel-wise encoding models and decoding algorithms to predict neural responses to stimuli like movies and images.

Awards & Grants

• Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (2012–present)
• USC Travel Award (2010)
• Rockwell Dennis Hunt Scholastic Award (2006)

Lab & Collaborations

The Pieces of Mind Lab integrates neuroscience, computational modeling, and psychophysics to study high-level vision. Recent work includes the Visual Experience Dataset, a multimodal recording of naturalistic visual experiences.