About

Thomas A. Carlson is a Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, with a specialization in Philosophy and Religion and the History of Christian Thought. His research and teaching areas include religion and modern philosophy, particularly German idealism, phenomenology, hermeneutics, and deconstruction. He has a special interest in the traditions of mystical and negative theology, as well as the relations between theology, modern science, and politics. Carlson's work explores the intersections of religion, modernity, and post-modernity, focusing on themes such as secularization, religion and politics, and the religious dimensions of technological culture. He has authored books including 'The Indiscrete Image: Infinitude and Creation of the Human' and 'Image Indiscretion: Finitude and the Naming of God,' and has contributed to numerous scholarly articles and translations in the fields of theology, phenomenology, and religious philosophy.

Research topics

• Artificial Intelligence
• Computer Science
• Neuroscience
• Linguistics
• Philosophy
• Psychology
• Theology
• Computer vision

Selected publications

• The effect of hunger and state preferences on the neural processing of food images

  Cortex · 2026-03-28

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• «Etter at du var her, så skjedde det noe i klasserommet»: Felles kunnskapsutvikling i partnerskap mellom skole og lærerutdanning

  Uniped · 2025-09-22

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Tidligere forskning viser at det kan være vanskelig å etablere likeverdige og kunnskapsproduserende partnerskap mellom aktører i skole og lærerutdanning. Denne studien bygger på data fra et partnerskap hvor man, innledende utfordringer med å finne et felles samarbeidsprosjekt til tross, har lykkes med å utvikle et produktivt samspill og ny kunnskap sammen. Artikkelen er basert på intervjuer, notater, observasjoner og refleksjonstekster fra to lærerutdannere og to lærere som har samarbeidet tett i partnerskapet. Med utgangspunkt i teori om epistemisk samspill og epistemisk emergens undersøker vi hvilken kunnskap som har blitt utviklet, samt hvilke forhold som fremmer, og hvilke som hemmer utviklingen av ny felles kunnskap i partnerskapet. Studien viser at partnerne utvikler nye felles forståelser av fellesskapende undervisning som didaktisk, fagspesifikk og kollektiv. Vi finner også at partnernes felles kunnskapsutvikling både kan hemmes og fremmes av fire forhold: felles faglig utvikling, modning og selvstendighet, det uforutsigbare klasserommet og ulike logikker og institusjonelle spenninger. Vi bidrar til forskningen ved å fremheve epistemiske samspill og emergens som fruktbare analytiske innganger i forskning på partnerskap. I stedet for å være ensidig opptatt av spenninger og motsetninger argumenterer vi for at forskere bør se på hvordan slike samspill skaper betingelser for at ny kunnskap kan oppstå, og hvilken felles kunnskap som faktisk utvikles i partnerskap mellom skole og lærerutdanning.

  PublisherDOI

• Earthly Moods, Climates of Concern (Taking the Temperature of Our Time)

  2025-12-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Our time, today, seems to be one in which we worry increasingly about what our time-our day, our age-may be doing to time itself.It seems to many that we may be out of time, or nearly out-that we are living now in a time, or that we will very soon reach a time, wherein we will have no more time because we will suffer irreversible changes within the ecological domain that, while stemming directly from human forms of life, prove devastating to the very conditions of such life (or any other).Our master term for such devastation within contemporary discourse is almost surely that of climate, as in the "climate change" we speak about euphemistically but should perhaps more honestly address as climate collapse or climate catastrophe, one that impends in the measure of the earth's rising temperatures.[1]Within the following, I aim to address the question of climate in our time not only in its ecological senses but also in its affective senses-in light of certain moods now widespread among us, and still spreading, thanks to our dire ecological circumstances.What do we hear, or see, in and through those moods?In what voice do they sing?

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The effect of hunger and state preferences on the neural processing of food images

  bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2025-09-12

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  Visual information plays a key role in guiding food-related decisions. While previous studies have shown that features such as calories and naturalness are encoded by the brain, upon simply seeing the stimuli, it remains unclear how this encoding is shaped by the observer's current state. In this study, we explore the effect of 1) hunger state, 2) task relevance, and 3) current individual preference on the processing of visual food information. Participants (N = 23) underwent two EEG sessions: one after fasting overnight and another after eating normally. During each session, participants did two separate tasks, one where the stimuli were task-relevant and one where attention was distracted away. We used multivariate analysis methods to assess the impact of hunger on the representation of food-related features, and to determine the time-course of information related to food flavour, personal appeal, and arousal, across both tasks. Results showed that information about edibility (food vs non-food object), food identity (e.g., hamburger vs pizza), flavour profile, or personal appeal and arousal was not influenced by the hunger manipulation. Flavour was represented regardless of attentive state, whereas personal appeal and arousal information emerged later and were only observed when the food was task-relevant. We found that food appeal and arousal encoding were more closely aligned with behavioural ratings within rather than between sessions, suggesting the nature of the encoding was driven by current state. The study provides insights into how personal preferences and physiological states influence the representation of food information in the brain.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Rotation-tolerant representations elucidate the time-course of high-level object processing

  2025-11-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Despite the very different retinal images that result from different viewing conditions, humans have little difficulty recognising visual objects in varying circumstances. One source of variability is 2-D rotation, which results in an object having different orientations. Here, we studied how the brain transforms rotated object images into object representations that are tolerant to rotation. We measured time-varying electroencephalography responses to object images shown in eight different orientations, presented at either 5 Hz or 20 Hz. We used multivariate classification to assess when rotation-tolerant object information emerged, and whether the rotation-tolerant processing would be limited at the faster presentation rate. We compared this to fixed-rotation measures of object decoding, where the classifier is trained and tested on the same orientation. Our results showed that both fixed-rotation and rotation-tolerant object decoding emerged at an early stage of processing, less than 100 ms after stimulus onset. However, rotation-tolerant information peaked later than fixed-rotation information, suggesting rotation-tolerant object representations are most prominent during a late stage of processing, around 200 ms after stimulus onset. Both fixed-rotation and rotation-tolerant object information was lower for the 20 Hz compared to 5 Hz presentation rate, which suggests that object information processing is disrupted, but not eliminated, for fast presentation rates. Our results show that object information arises at similar times in the brain regardless of whether it is investigated with the fixed-rotation or rotation-tolerant object decoding method. An object representation that is tolerant to rotation and generalises across different exemplars of the same object is established in later stages of processing.

  PublisherDOI

• Defense First: A Multi-Asset Tactical Model for Adaptive Downside Protection

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Dynamics of visual object coding within and across the hemispheres: Objects in the periphery

  Science Advances · 2025-01-01 · 8 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  The human brain continuously integrates information across its two hemispheres to construct a coherent representation of the perceptual world. Characterizing how visual information is represented in each hemisphere over time is crucial for understanding how hemispheric transfer contributes to perception. Here, we investigated information processing within each hemisphere over time and the degree to which it is distinct or duplicated across hemispheres. We presented participants with object images lateralized to the left or right visual fields while measuring their brain activity with electroencephalography. Stimulus coding was more robust and emerged earlier in the contralateral than the ipsilateral hemisphere. Presentation of two stimuli, one to each hemifield, reduced the fidelity of representations in both hemispheres relative to one stimulus alone, signifying hemispheric interference. Last, we found that processing within the contralateral, but not ipsilateral, hemisphere was biased to image-related over concept-related information. Together, these results suggest that hemispheric transfer operates to filter irrelevant information and efficiently prioritize processing of meaning.

  PublisherDOI

• Disentangling objects’ contextual associations from perceptual and conceptual attributes using time-resolved neural decoding

  bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2025-05-30 · 2 citations

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Humans effortlessly relate what they see to what they know, drawing on existing knowledge of objects’ perceptual, conceptual, and contextual attributes while searching for and recognising objects. While prior studies have investigated the temporal dynamics of perceptual and conceptual object properties in the neural signal, it remains unclear whether and when contextual associations are uniquely represented. In this study, we used representational similarity analysis on electroencephalography (EEG) data to explore how the brain processes the perceptual, conceptual, and contextual dimensions of object knowledge over time. Using human similarity judgments of 190 naturalistic object concepts presented as either as images or words, we constructed separate behavioural models of objects’ perceptual, conceptual, and contextual properties. We correlated these models with neural patterns from two EEG datasets, one publicly available and one newly collected, both recorded while participants passively viewed the same object stimuli. Across both datasets, we found that perceptual features dominated the early EEG response to object images, while conceptual features emerged later. Contextual associations were also reflected in neural patterns, but their explanatory power largely overlapped with that of conceptual models, suggesting limited unique representation of objects’ contextual attributes under passive viewing conditions. These results highlight the brain’s integration of perceptual and conceptual information when processing visual objects. By combining high temporal resolution EEG with behaviourally derived models, this study advances our understanding of how distinct dimensions of object knowledge are encoded in the human brain.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Mapping the dynamics of visual feature coding: Insights into perception and integration

  PLoS Computational Biology · 2024-01-08 · 24 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  The basic computations performed in the human early visual cortex are the foundation for visual perception. While we know a lot about these computations, a key missing piece is how the coding of visual features relates to our perception of the environment. To investigate visual feature coding, interactions, and their relationship to human perception, we investigated neural responses and perceptual similarity judgements to a large set of visual stimuli that varied parametrically along four feature dimensions. We measured neural responses using electroencephalography (N = 16) to 256 grating stimuli that varied in orientation, spatial frequency, contrast, and colour. We then mapped the response profiles of the neural coding of each visual feature and their interactions, and related these to independently obtained behavioural judgements of stimulus similarity. The results confirmed fundamental principles of feature coding in the visual system, such that all four features were processed simultaneously but differed in their dynamics, and there was distinctive conjunction coding for different combinations of features in the neural responses. Importantly, modelling of the behaviour revealed that every stimulus feature contributed to perceptual judgements, despite the untargeted nature of the behavioural task. Further, the relationship between neural coding and behaviour was evident from initial processing stages, signifying that the fundamental features, not just their interactions, contribute to perception. This study highlights the importance of understanding how feature coding progresses through the visual hierarchy and the relationship between different stages of processing and perception.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Time-Course of Food Representation in the Human Brain

  Journal of Neuroscience · 2024-05-13 · 15 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Humans make decisions about food every day. The visual system provides important information that forms a basis for these food decisions. Although previous research has focused on visual object and category representations in the brain, it is still unclear how visually presented food is encoded by the brain. Here, we investigate the time-course of food representations in the brain. We used time-resolved multivariate analyses of electroencephalography (EEG) data, obtained from human participants (both sexes), to determine which food features are represented in the brain and whether focused attention is needed for this. We recorded EEG while participants engaged in two different tasks. In one task, the stimuli were task relevant, whereas in the other task, the stimuli were not task relevant. Our findings indicate that the brain can differentiate between food and nonfood items from ∼112 ms after the stimulus onset. The neural signal at later latencies contained information about food naturalness, how much the food was transformed, as well as the perceived caloric content. This information was present regardless of the task. Information about whether food is immediately ready to eat, however, was only present when the food was task relevant and presented at a slow presentation rate. Furthermore, the recorded brain activity correlated with the behavioral responses in an odd-item-out task. The fast representation of these food features, along with the finding that this information is used to guide food categorization decision-making, suggests that these features are important dimensions along which the representation of foods is organized.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Tijl Grootswagers

  Western Sydney University

  223 shared

• Amanda K. Robinson

  125 shared

• Hinze Hogendoorn

  Queensland University of Technology

  66 shared

• Erin Goddard

  UNSW Sydney

  61 shared

• Charles P. Marsh

  Watershed

  60 shared

• Manfred O. Krause

  52 shared

• Anina N. Rich

  Macquarie University

  47 shared

• Lina Teichmann

  National Institute of Mental Health

  45 shared

Education

• PhD, Psychology

  University of Minnesota System

  2004