Martin Adrianus Vinck graduated summa cum laude in 2008 from Radboud University Nijmegen (Netherlands).
Current Position
- Neurophysics Department, Radboud University Nijmegen
- Donders Centre for Neuroscience
- Head of Department Neurophysics (since 1 January 2026)
Previous Appointments
- Max Planck Society
- Yale University (trained with Jess Cardin and Mike Higley)
- University of Amsterdam (trained with Cyriel Pennartz, Francesco Battaglia, Jadin Jackson)
- Donders Institute for Neuroscience (trained with Francesco Battaglia, Paul Tiesinga, Thilo Womelsdorf, Pascal Fries, Conrado Bosman)
Major Grants & Fellowships
- ERC Starting Grant (2020–2025)
- ERC Consolidator Grant (2025–2030)
- NWO VIDI Career Grant (2023–2028)
- DBI2 Neuroprosthetics Grant (€23M total; Steering Committee member, WP1 leader)
- Multiple DFG Grants
- Multiple BMBF Grants
- Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP) Fellow
- NWO Toptalent and NWO Rubicon Fellowships
Awards
- Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) Young Scientist Award (€10,000 personal prize)
- Scopus / Elsevier Young Scientist Award
Major Scientific Contributions
- Developed widely used analytical measures for quantifying inter-areal brain interactions and directed communication (e.g. Vinck et al., 2010, 2011, 2012, 2015).
- Introduced novel mathematical tools for the unsupervised identification of temporal sequences in high-dimensional neural data, including the SpikeShip framework (Sotomayor-Gomez et al., 2023a).
- Demonstrated that precise information in visual cortex is encoded by spike timing relative to oscillatory phase (Vinck et al., 2010, PNAS).
- Showed that high-dimensional temporal spike sequences carry substantially more information and exhibit greater stability than traditional spike-count codes (e.g. Sotomayor-Gomez et al., 2023b).
- Established a novel predictive coding theory with strong empirical support, explaining neural dynamics across cortical areas (Uran et al., 2022, Neuron).
- Discovered a major previously unrecognized cell type in primate primary visual cortex with distinct functional properties (Onorato et al., 2020, Neuron).
- Pioneered pupillometry in rodents as a quantitative tool for brain-state monitoring, dissociating arousal and motor influences on cortical activity (Vinck et al., 2015, Neuron; McGinley et al., 2015).
- Developed a new standard model for gamma oscillations in visual cortex based on interactions between three neuronal populations, integrating experimental and theoretical approaches (Peter et al., 2019, eLife; Uran et al., 2022, Neuron; Onorato et al., 2025; Tahvili et al., 2025).
- Made major conceptual and theoretical contributions to understanding inter-areal communication and predictive processing, proposing new frameworks and validating them experimentally (Schneider et al., 2023; Vinck et al., 2023, Neuron; Vinck et al., 2024, TICS).
- Provided new insights into convolutional neural networks and their relationship to biological neural representations (Farahat & Vinck).
- Advanced understanding of the relationship between structural (anatomical) and functional/effective brain connectivity (Vezoli et al., 2021a,b).
- Derived fundamental synaptic plasticity rules from predictive processing principles, linking learning dynamics to theory (Saponati et al., 2023).
- Established damped harmonic oscillators as a principled base model for neural oscillations and conceived the idea to use these units to effectively train recurrent neural network architectures (Spyropoulos et al., 2022, Nature Communications).
- Advanced circuit-level understanding of attention across cortical layers and cell types using combined experimental and theoretical approaches (Vinck et al., 2013, Neuron; Spyropoulos et al., 2024).
- Demonstrated the synergistic nature of broadband cortical responses using information-geometric approaches (Gelens et al., 2024, Nature Communications; Roberts et al., 2025, Nature Communications).
- Discovered “neighbourhood neurons” in perirhinal cortex that segment the spatial environment into compartments and exhibit sustained activity (Bos*, Vinck* et al., 2017, Nature Communications).
Bibliometrics
H-index: 45
Total citations: >10,600
Citations per year: >1,300 (2025)
Source: Google Scholar, as of September 2026.
Research Approaches
- Theoretical neuroscience
- Computational modeling and simulations
- Machine learning and neural network modeling
- Experimental neuroscience: optogenetics, optotagging, high-density multi-area electrophysiology
- Analytical method development for brain data and beyond