Research Interests
My research interests include the neuronal basis of perception, focussing specifically on how the activity of small populations of neurons is correlated with the perception of specific visual stimuli. I am also very interested in the temporal dynamics of neuronal responses to novel and ongoing stimuli. This incorporates a range of issues including how the information content carried by a population of neurons changes over time and how neuronal adaptation affects or improves the ability of neurons to code the parameters of a visual stimulus.
My most recent work has looked at:
1. the psychophysical and neural sensitivity to small changes in the speed of an ongoing visual stimulus. Preliminary results were presented at SFN2006 in Atlanta and a pdf of the presentation is available here.
2. the activity of MT and MST neurons during short-latency ocular-following. We found that the magnitude of the neuronal responses evoked by wide-field background motion is dependent on the length of time between the end of a saccade and the onset of background motion.
3. the acceleration sensitivity of neurons in areas 17, 18 and PMLS. We found that neurons in these areas were not specifically sensitive to acceleration, but there responses could not solely be predicted from the neuron's responses to constant speeds. Rather, in models incorporating a neuron's speed tuning as well as adaptation and speed-dependent latencies it was possible to accurately predict the responses of individual neurons to accelerating and decelerating stimuli.
Past and present collaborators
- Michael Ibbotson and lab, with whom I did my PhD (Nathan Crowder, Markus Hietanen, Sophie Wilson, John Greenwood)
- Mike Mustari and Seiji Ono at Yerkes National Primate Center, Emory University
- Colin Clifford and Szonya Durant at the University of Sydney
- Bogdan Dreher at the University of Sydney