Brain Imaging and Active Vision lab

Understanding through visualising

Members of the lab

Aims

Brain imaging work at the Centre has been expanded significantly through the use of state of the art fMRI facilities in Bremen, the Wellcome Functional Imaging Laboratory in London and the University of Melbourne Medical School. Novel stimuli that provide better isolation of the stimulus attributes of interest (such as neural mechanisms involved in extrapolation of stimulus direction, colour constancy or conscious visual perception) have been developed in the Centre and used in collaborative studies. The Active Vision Laboratory has equipment for measuring eye movements and reaching/grasping. Current investigations include the following:

1.  Work supported by the Wellcome Trust (Morgan, Grant, Tibber & Melmoth) is examining the mechanisms involved in 'Active Vision', including the motor extrapolation of visual direction, using a combination of psychophysical, movement tracking and fMRI techniques, the latter in collaboration with Geraint Rees at the Wellcome Functional Imaging Laboratory at UCL.
2. A current fMRI project based in Bremen has used the BOLD response to localise the mechanisms responsible for the detection of microsecond interocular delays. Another fMRI project in Bremen has demonstrated convincingly that rapid colour constancy mechanisms are associated largely with monocularly driven neurons and that the primary visual cortex plays a major part in this function.
3. Hosking is conducting collaborative work between the departments of ophthalmology and brain imaging in the University of Melbourne medical school. The investigations have received funding from the Imaging Research Foundation of Australia to identify new applications for functional and anatomical MRI in glaucoma. The project aims to identify cortical changes associated with retinal ganglion cell death at various stages of disease and the effect of disease progression and anti glaucoma therapy. The primary objective is to develop a new software application for case-wise risk assessment of glaucoma onset and progression.

Current Projects

• Figure-ground discrimination and temporal characteristics of visual perception
• Perceptual learning
• Early diagnosis of visual disorders