Burcu Ayşen Ürgen, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology

Education

  • PhD in Cognitive Science, University of California, San Diego (USA)
  • MS in Cognitive Science, Middle East Technical University (Turkey)
  • BS in Computer Engineering, Bilkent University (Turkey)

Research

Dr. Ürgen’s primary research area is human perception (visual, auditory, and multisensory). In addition to behavioral methods, she uses a wide range of invasive and non-invasive neuroimaging techniques including fMRI, EEG, and intracranial recordings to study the neural basis of human perception. Her research commonly utilizes state-of-the-art computational techniques including machine learning, computer vision, and effective connectivity. Besides her basic cognitive neuroscience research, Dr. Ürgen also pursues an interdisciplinary research between social robotics and cognitive neuroscience to investigate the human factors that lead to successful interaction with artificial agents such as robots. 

Selected Publications

Er, S., Elmas, H. O., Saygin, A. P., & Urgen, B. A. (2025). The interplay of prior information and motion cues in resolving visual ambiguity in agent perception. Neuropsychologia, 217, 109213 (link to paper). 

Oguz, O. C., Aydin, B., & Urgen, B. A. (2024). Biological motion perception in the theoretical framework of perceptual decision-making: An event-related potential study. Vision research, 218, 108380. (link to paper). 

Nizamoglu, H., & Urgen, B. A. (2024). Neural processing of bottom-up perception of biological motion under attentional load. Vision Research, 214, 108328. (link to paper). 

Pekçetin, T. N., Evsen, Ş., Pekçetin, S., Acarturk, C., & Urgen, B. A. (2023). A naturalistic setup for presenting real people and live actions in experimental psychology and cognitive neuroscience studies. JoVE (Journal of Visualized Experiments), 198, e65436. (link to paper). 

Urgen, B. A., Kutas, M., & Saygin, A. P. (2018). Uncanny valley as a window into predictive processing in the social brain. Neuropsychologia, 114, 181-185. (link to paper). 

See my Google Scholar webpage for a full list: 

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=wQ9ucqsAAAAJ&hl=en