Mattias Nilsson

I seek to understand how eye movements and gaze behavior reflect brain function in health and disease and across the lifespan, from childhood to old age. A central goal is to develop models and applications that advance our understanding of the relationship between eye movements and brain function and can contribute to the early detection of neurological diseases and disorders. I work primarily with eye tracking, but I am interested in all types of physiological data that can be linked to human sensory, perceptual, and cognitive processes. 

One strand of my research focuses on reading development in children and adolescents and how eye movements during reading can reflect language-based reading difficulties, commonly referred to as dyslexia. 
More recently, I have also begun investigating how eye movements are affected by changes in the nervous system and the degeneration of nerve cells, for example in Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. 
Can subtle changes in eye movements and gaze behavior serve as early markers of these conditions?
 
To address these questions, we develop predictive models using machine learning and artificial intelligence. These metods offer new opportunities to explore the complex interplay between vision, eye movements, and brain function, and to translate this knowledge into clinically relevant applications that benefit society.

Awards and Distinctions

• 2022 – Award from The Swedish Dyslexia Association and the Marianne Bernadotte scholarship fund for "Important contributions to reading  research".
• 2019 – IVA-award for "Research with prominent potential for trade and industry in the field of digitization". Awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences (Kungl. Ingenjörsvetenskapsakademien - IVA).
• 2016 – EiNAR award (Excellence in Neuroscience Annual Reward). Awarded by the Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet.

• 2018 – Present: Course coordinator and teacher in Statistics and Scientific Methods, Optometry Programme, Karolinska Institutet
• 2016 – 2017: Teacher in Statistics and Scientific Methods, Optometry Programme, Karolinska Institutet
• 2007– 2012: Teacher in computational linguistics at the Language Technology Programme, Uppsala University

Supervision to doctoral degree

• Andrea Strandberg, Gaze into literacy: the potential of eye movement analysis for assessing children's word reading skills in ecological contexts