The Brain and Behaviour Lab studies perception, attention, and sensorimotor processes, using primarily behavioural and event-related brain potential (ERP) measures. We investigate cognitive and brain mechanisms in neurologically intact adult humans, and also the disruption of these processes caused by brain damage or atypical development.
Past and present research results can be found under “Publications”. This research focused on topics such as:
– Mechanisms of selective attention in vision, audition, and touch
– Crossmodal links in selective attention
– Interactions between selective attention and emotion
– Sensorimotor links in supraliminal and subliminal perception
– Face perception.
Our current research focuses on two areas:
Visual selective attention
How does directing attention to particular locations or stimulus features (e.g., colour, size, or orientation) affect the competition between stimuli for attentional selection? Is stimulus selection determined by bottom-up salience or top-down task sets? How are attentional goals represented? How is task-relevant information about different visual features or different sensory modalities integrated? How do visual selective attention and visual working memory interact?
A review of ERP research on selective attention can be found here.
Face perception and face recognition and their disruption in Prosopagnosia
Can we identify distinct ERP markers for different face processing stages (face perception, face recognition, detection of emotional facial expression)? What do these markers tell us about the functional and temporal organisation of the face processing system? Which face processing stages are affected in developmental and acquired prosopagnosia, and how?
A review of ERP research on face perception can be found here.