Biography
I am an Assistant Professor in Brain & Cognition at the Erasmus School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Rotterdam University.
Working memory (WM) and attention are two major conceptual pillars of human cognition, and how they relate to each other is a topic of intense interest at cognitive, neural, and theoretical levels of investigation. My research interests are in the mechanisms underlying perceptual processing and working memory storage of visual, spatial, and verbal information at the behavioral, computational, and neural levels. Moreover, I am interested in how abstract semantic knowledge and temporal information are processed and stored in working memory. Currently, I am emploring how hippocampal mechanisms of spatial navigation are employed in memory search. I investigate these topics using behavioral paradigms, eye-tracking, VR, EEG and fMRI.
Erasmus School of Social and Behavioural Sciences
- sahan@essb.eur.nl
More information
Work
- Lara Stella Marie Schroth, Wim Fias & Muhammet Ikbal Sahan (2025) - Eye movements follow the dynamic shifts of attention through serial order in verbal working memory - Scientific Reports, 15 (1) - doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-85015-6 - [link]
- Muhammet Ikbal Sahan, Tom Verguts, Carsten Nicolas Boehler, Gilles Pourtois & Wim Fias (2016) - Paying attention to working memory: Similarities in the spatial distribution of attention in mental and physical space - Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 23 (4), 1190-1197 - doi: 10.3758/s13423-015-0990-5 - [link]
- Muhammet Ikbal Sahan, Jean-Philippe van Dijck & Wim Fias (2022) - Eye-movements reveal the serial position of the attended item in verbal working memory - Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 29 (2), 530-540 - doi: 10.3758/s13423-021-02005-9 - [link]
- Muhammet Ikbal Sahan, Steve Majerus, Michael Andres & Wim Fias (2019) - Functionally distinct contributions of parietal cortex to a numerical landmark task: An fMRI study - Cortex, 114, 28-40 - doi: 10.1016/j.cortex.2018.11.005 - [link]
4.1 Electrophysiology
- Year
- 2025
- Course Code
- FSWP4027BC
3.6C The Brain
- Year
- 2025
- Course Code
- FSWP3093B
3.6P Brain Anatomy
- Year
- 2025
- Course Code
- FSWP3047B
4.1 Cognitive Neurosciences
- Year
- 2025
- Course Code
- FSWP4025BC
