About Us

Bernhardt-Walther Lab


521 Sidney Smith Hall

100 St. George Street

University of Toronto

Toronto, Canada

Dirk's Office


4040 Sidney Smith Hall

100 St. George Street

University of Toronto

dirk.bernhardt.walther@utoronto.ca

Mastodon: fediscience.org/@DirkBWalther

@DirkBWalther

Equity, Diversity and Inclusion


Our scientific goals are best achieved in an environment in which a diversity of backgrounds and experiences come together in a respectful, curious and stimulating manner. Our lab should be a place in which science and truth always rule over hierarchy, a place which stimulates creativity, productivity, honesty, and well-being for everyone involved.

We actively support diversity based on race, gender, sexual orientation, neurodiversity, religion, and many more. Discrimination has no place in science and in our group. This involves all aspects of lab-life, including day-to-day lab practices, recruitment, training, and development opportunities.

Lab Space


Our lab is located on the ground floor of Sidney Smith Hall (room 521), next to the loading dock. There we have office space, a meeting room and two testing rooms for behavioral testing and eye tracking studies.


Eye Tracking Technology


For eye tracking, we use an EyeLink 1000 Plus form SR research with a tower mount.


How does eye tracking work? The eye tracker uses a small video camera to record an image of one or both eyes and reports to the experimenter a continuous stream of numbers that indicates eye position (indicated by pupil location and cornea reflection). To make the eye visible to the camera in the dark, a small infrared light is used to illuminate the eye. Specialized software on a dedicated computer analyzes the video obtained by the camera.


fMRI


We conduct fMRI experiments at Toronto Neuroimaging Facility (TONI) which gives us access to Siemens Prisma 3T Full-Body MRI Scanner and a full range of peripheral devices to enable first-rate functional MRI studies, such as visual and auditory stimulus presentation, eye movement monitoring, cardiac and respiratory recording, and a mock scanner.