Fred W. Mast is a full professor of Psychology at the

University of Bern The University of Bern (german: Universität Bern, french: Université de Berne, la, Universitas Bernensis) is a university in the Switzerland, Swiss capital of Bern and was founded in 1834. It is regulated and financed by the Canton of Bern. It ...

Switzerland ). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...

, specialized in mental imagery, sensorimotor processing, and visual perception. He directs the ''Cognitive Psychology, Perception, and Research Methods Section'' at the Department of Psychology of the University of Bern.

Early life and education

Fred Mast was born and raised in

Wil Wil () is the capital of the ''Wahlkreis'' (constituency) of Wil in the canton of St. Gallen in Switzerland. Wil is the third largest city in the Canton of St. Gallen, after the city of St. Gallen and Rapperswil-Jona, a twin city that merged in ...

(Eastern Switzerland) and studied

Psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...

Philosophy Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...

, and

Neurophysiology Neurophysiology is a branch of physiology and neuroscience that studies nervous system function rather than nervous system architecture. This area aids in the diagnosis and monitoring of neurological diseases. Historically, it has been dominated b ...

at the

University of Zurich The University of Zürich (UZH, german: Universität Zürich) is a public research university located in the city of Zürich, Switzerland. It is the largest university in Switzerland, with its 28,000 enrolled students. It was founded in 1833 f ...

where he also obtained his PhD in 1995 working with Professor Norbert Bischof. He taught

Perception Perception () is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information or environment. All perception involves signals that go through the nervous system ...

Cognition Cognition refers to "the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thought, ...

Psychophysics Psychophysics quantitatively investigates the relationship between physical stimuli and the sensations and perceptions they produce. Psychophysics has been described as "the scientific study of the relation between stimulus and sensation" or, m ...

, and

Neuroscience Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system (the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nervous system), its functions and disorders. It is a multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, anatomy, molecular biology, development ...

at the University of Zurich and at the

Federal Institute of Technology (colloquially) , former_name = eidgenössische polytechnische Schule , image = ETHZ.JPG , image_size = , established = , type = Public , budget = CHF 1.896 billion (2021) , rector = Günther Dissertori , president = Joël Mesot , ac ...

(ETHZ). In 1998 he moved to the US and became a research associate at the Department of Psychology at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

working with Professor

Stephen Kosslyn Stephen Michael Kosslyn (born 1948) is an American psychologist and neuroscientist. Kosslyn is best known for his work on visual cognition and the science of learning. Kosslyn currently serves as the president of Active Learning Sciences Inc., w ...

and had a part-time appointment at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

(MIT). He returned to Switzerland in 2002 to join the Faculty of Arts at the University of Zurich and obtained his

Habilitation Habilitation is the highest university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in many European countries. The candidate fulfills a university's set criteria of excellence in research, teaching and further education, usually including a ...

("venia legendi") a year later. In 2005 he became a full professor for Cognitive Psychology at the

University of Lausanne The University of Lausanne (UNIL; french: links=no, Université de Lausanne) in Lausanne, Switzerland was founded in 1537 as a school of Protestant theology, before being made a university in 1890. The university is the second oldest in Switzer ...

(2005-2008). He was also the responsible coordinator for

Cognitive Psychology Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity, and reasoning. Cognitive psychology originated in the 1960s in a break from behaviorism, which ...

teaching at the

Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne Swiss may refer to: * the adjectival form of Switzerland *Swiss people Places *Swiss, Missouri * Swiss, North Carolina *Swiss, West Virginia *Swiss, Wisconsin Other uses *Swiss-system tournament, in various games and sports *Swiss International ...

(EPFL). Since 2008, he is a full professor of Psychology at the University of Bern. He was Head of Department (2012-2014), Dean of th
Faculty of Human Sciences
(2015-2017), and currently co-directing with Professor Claudio Bassetti th

�
Decoding Sleep
��. Fred Mast is married and has two sons. The family lives in

Pully Pully () is a municipality in Switzerland in the canton of Vaud, located in the district of Lavaux-Oron. It is one of the eastern suburbs of the city of Lausanne, located on the shores of Lake Geneva (''Lac Léman'') and at the foot of the vin ...

Selected publications

*Mast, F., Kosslyn, S.M. & Berthoz. A. (1999). Visual mental imagery interferes with allocentric orientation judgements. NeuroReport, 10, 3549–3553. *Mast, F.W., Berthoz, A. & Kosslyn, S.M. (2001). Mental imagery of visual motion modifies the perception of roll vection stimulation. Perception, 30, 945–957. *Mast, F.W. & Kosslyn, S.M. (2002). Eye movements during visual mental imagery. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 6, 271–272. *Mast, F.W. & Kosslyn, S.M. (2002). Visual mental images can be ambiguous: Insights from individual differences in spatial transformation abilities. Cognition, 86, 57–70. *Mast, F.W., Ganis, G., Christie, S. & Kosslyn, S.M. (2003). Four types of visual mental imagery processing in upright and tilted observers. Cognitive Brain Research, 17, 238–247. *Mast, F.W., Newby, N.J. & Young, L.R. (2003). Sensorimotor aspects of high-speed artificial gravity: II. The effect of head position on illusory self-motion. Journal of Vestibular Research, 12, 283–289. *Mast, F.W. & Zaltman, G. (2005). A behavioral window on the mind of the market: An application of the response time paradigm. Brain Research Bulletin, 67, 422–427. *Mast, F.W. (2005). Mental images: Always present, never there. Brain and Behavioral Sciences, 28, 769–770. *Mast, F.W., Merfeld, D.M. & Kosslyn, S.M. (2006). Visual mental imagery during caloric vestibular stimulation. Neuropsychologia, 44, 101–109. *Lobmaier, J.S. & Mast, F.W. (2007). The Thatcher illusion: Rotating the viewer instead of the picture. Perception, 36, 537–546. *Lobmaier, J.S. & Mast, F.W. (2008). Perception of novel faces: The parts have it! Perception, 55, 47–53. *Grabherr L., Nicoucar K., Mast F.W. & Merfeld D.M. (2008). Vestibular thresholds for yaw rotation about an earth-vertical axis as a function of frequency. Experimental Brain Research, 186, 677–681. *Lobmaier J.S. & Mast, F.W. (2008) Face imagery is based on featural representations. Experimental Psychology, 55, 47–53. *Lobmaier J.S. Klaver P, Loenneker T, Martin E, & Mast F,.W. (2008). Featural and configural face processing strategies: Evidence from an fMRI study. NeuroReport, 19, 287–291. *Reisen, N., Hoffrage, U. & Mast, F.W. (2008). Identifying decision strategies in a consumer choice situation. Judgment and Decision Making, 4(8), 641–658. *Frick, A., Daum, M., Walser, S. & Mast, F.W. (2009). Motor processes in children's mental rotation. Journal of Cognition and Development. 10, 18–40. *Bombari, D., Mast, F.W. & Lobmaier, J.S. (2009). Featural, configural and holistic face processing strategies evoke different scan patterns. Perception, 38, 1508–1521. *Tartaglia, E., Bamert, L., Mast, F.W. & Herzog, M. (2009). Human perceptual learning by mental imagery. Current Biology, 19, 1–5. *Lobmaier, J.S., Mast, F.W. & Hecht, H. (2010). For the mind's eye the world is two-dimensional. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 17, 36–40. *Lobmaier, J.S., Bölte, J., Mast, F.W. & Dobel, C. (2010). Configural and featural processing in humans with congenital prosopagnosia. Advances in Cognitive Psychology, 6, 23–34. *Wissmath, B., Stricker, D., Weibel, D., Siegenthaler, E. & Mast, F.W. (2010). The illusion of being located in dynamic virtual environments. Can eye movement parameters predict spatial presence ? Journal of Eye Movement Research, 3(5):2, 1–8. *Martarelli, C.S. & Mast, F.W. (2011). Preschool children's eye movements during pictorial recall. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 29, 425–436. *Weibel, D., Wissmath, B. & Mast, F.W. (2011). The role of cognitive appraisal in media-induced presence and emotions. Cognition and Emotion, 25 (7), 1291–1298. *Grabherr, L., Cuffel, C., Guyot, J.-P. & Mast, F.W. (2011). Mental transformation abilities in patients with unilateral and bilateral vestibular loss. Experimental Brain Research, 209, 205–214. *Wissmath, B., Weibel, D., Schmutz, J. & Mast, F.W. (2011). Being present in more than one place at a time? Patterns of mental self-localization. Consciousness and Cognition, 20, 1808–1815. *Hartmann, M., Falconer, C. & Mast, F.W. (2011). Imagined paralysis impairs embodied spatial transformations. Cognitive Neuroscience, 2, 155–162. *Hartmann, M., Grabherr, L. & Mast, F.W. (2012). Moving along the mental number line: Interactions between whole-body motion and numerical cognition. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 38, 1416-1427 *Lopez, C., Bieri, C., Preuss, N. & Mast, F.W. (2012). Tactile and vestibular mechanisms underlying ownership for body parts: a non-visual variant of the rubber hand illusion. Neuroscience Letters, 511, 120–124. *Falconer, C. & Mast, F.W. (2012). Balancing the mind: Vestibular induced facilitation of egocentric mental transformations. Experimental Psychology, 28, 1–8. *Lopez, C., Blanke, O. & Mast, F.W. (2012). The human vestibular cortex revealed by coordinate-based activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis. Journal of Neuroscience, 212, 159–179. *Lopez, C., Schreyer, H.-M., Preuss, N. & Mast, F.W. (2012). Vestibular stimulation modifies the body schema. Neuropsychologia, 50 (8), 1830–1837. *Lobmaier, J.S., Hartmann, M., Volz, A.J. & Mast, F.W. (2012). Emotional expression affects the accuracy of gaze perception. Motivation and Emotion, 8. 573–577. *Tartaglia, E., Bamert, L., Herzog, M. & Mast, F.W. (2012). Perceptual learning of motion discrimination by mental imagery. Journal of Vision, 12(6), 1-10. *Bombari, D., Mora, B., Schaefer, S.C., Mast, F.W. & Lehr, H.-A. (2012). What was I thinking? Eye-tracking experiments underscore the bias that architecture exerts on nuclear grading in prostate cancer, PLoS ONE 7(5): e38023. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0038023 *Hartmann, M., Farkas, R. & Mast, F.W. (2012). Self-motion perception influences number processing: Evidence from a parity task. Cognitive Processing, 13, 189–192. *Hartmann, M. & Mast, F.W. (2012). Moving along the mental time line influences the processing of future related words. Consciousness and Cognition, 21, 1558–62. *Mast, F.W., Tartaglia, E. & Herzog, M. (2012). New percepts via mental imagery? Frontiers in Psychology, 3:360. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00360. *Lopez. C., Falconer, C. & Mast, F.W. (2012). Being moved by the self and others: influence of empathy on self-motion perception. PLoS ONE 8(1): e48293. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0048293. *Martarelli, C.S. & Mast, F.W. (2013). Is it real or is it fiction. Children's bias toward reality. Journal of Cognition and Development, 14, 141–153. *Hartmann, M., Furrer, S., Merfeld, D.M., Herzog, M. & Mast, F.W (2013). Self-motion perception training: Thresholds improve in the light but not in the dark, Experimental Brain Research, 226, 231–240. *Martarelli, C.S. & Mast, F.W. (2013). Eye movements during long-term pictorial recall. Psychological Research, 77(3), 303–309. *Golle, J., Lisibach, S., Mast, F.W., & Lobmaier, J.S. (2013). Sweet puppies and cute babies: Perceptual adaptation to babyfacedness transfers across species. PLoS One, 8(3): e58248. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0058248 *Bombari, D., Schmid, P.C., Schmid Mast, M., Birri, S., Mast, F.W. & Lobmaier, J.S. (2013). Emotion recognition: The role of featural and configural face information. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 66. 12, 2426-2442 doi: 10.1080/17470218.2013.789065 *Preuss, N., Harris, L. & Mast, F.W. (2013). Allocentric visual cues influence mental transformation of bodies. Journal of Vision, 13(12):14, 1-10. *Preuss, N., Hasler, G. & Mast, F.W. (2014). Caloric vestibular stimulation modulates affective control and mood. Brain Stimulation. DOI: 10.1016/j.brs.2013.09.003

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mast, Fred W. Living people Swiss psychologists University of Zurich alumni Academic staff of the University of Bern Year of birth missing (living people)