Core Faculty of the Cognitive Neuroscience Division
Britt Anderson, Assistant Professor
(BA, Arizona; MD, Southern California; PhD, Brown)
I am interested in developing mechanistically specific models of cognitive phenomena and submitting those models to experimental examination.
Currently, I am putting most of my energy on the topic of attention, broadly conceived. One interest is quasi-philosophical: what do we mean by the term ``attention'' and is our use consistent and cogent? In general, I feel attention is a "bad" word; attention is often reified. This reification leads to wasted experimental effort exploring nonsensical hypotheses and also obfuscates the presentation and interpretation of experimental data. What we need instead is an account of the experimental phenomena in terms of the experimental manipulations that lead to their being labeled as ``attentional.'' I think a good case can be made that attention is a Bayesian Decision Process (BDP).
A BDP has a few core components: a prior probability distribution, a likelihood, and a cost function. From these, and an assumption of what is the measure of ``optimal,'' one can calculate the ideal solution. I conjecture that we will find that all our so-called attentional results can be explained in terms of these three factors and that we can do quite well without the term attention, except perhaps as a verbal shorthand for these sorts of effects. Therefore, I spend a fair amount of time working to test this idea psychophysically. I have been testing participants in an experiment where the prior probability of where targets can appear in a simple visual discrimination task is modulated. We have found a potent effect of spatial prior probability. Other follow up studies are on-going.
A related notion of attention forks from the clinical syndrome of hemi-spatial neglect. This was an early research interest of mine during my years as an active practicing neurologist. From that experience, I came to appreciate that neglect is not homogeneous, strictly visual, nor simply spatial, and it certainly is not ``hemi;'' but still, in the colloquial sense, there does seem to be something common to many of these patients. My colleague, James Danckert, has been active in exploring the non-classical impairments of parietal lobe injury. Together, we are working on an account of parietal lobe injury that seeks to unify the mechanims under the concept of representational updating. Currently, we are working on a more theoretical paper that will make this notion of updating better defined and more concrete, at least from a functional standpoint. In addition, we are collaborating together and with our students on various psychophysical studies assessing how well participants with parietal lobe injury can learn to update an internal representation in response to environmental changes. One major research line has the participants playing Rock, Paper, Scissors. A second, looks at the ability to learn, covertly, a spatial probability distribution that influences target locations in a classification task.
I am also cross appointed to the Centre for Theoretical Neuroscience (CTN) which brings together researchers from Biology, Mathematics, Philosophy and Psychology to develop biologically plausible computational models of neural systems. Students enrolled in a PhD in any of these departments can also take a Diploma in Theoretical Neuroscience through the CTN.
If you are interested in graduate studies on these topics, drop me a line and we can see if we have common interests. Unlike many faculty in the department, I am happy to consider applications from individuals with non-psychology degrees, especially if they have computational training.
James Danckert, Associate Professor
Chair of Behavioural and Cognitive Neuroscience
Canada Research Chair (Tier II) in Cognitive Neuroscience
(BA, Melbourne University, Australia; MA, PhD, La Trobe University, Australia)
My research interests are primarily in human neuropsychology, and, more specifically, in the effects of right parietal brain lesions on behaviour. Right parietal lesions often lead to the disorder of neglect – the inability to attend or respond to stimuli in left visual space. Put simply, neglect patients behave as if one half of the world has simply ceased to exist. My research explores the nature of this fascinating disorder as well as examining the benefits and limitations of a recent rehabilitation technique which uses prismatic lenses. More recently, we have developed a model of neglect which suggests the disorder is best characterised as an inability to update internal representations of the external world and the patient's current or future goals for action. The methodologies we employ include behavioural studies (i.e., examining reaction times), kinematic measures (i.e., eye and hand movements) and functional MRI, which we conduct at Grand River Hospital. We recently established a database of neurological patients who are willing to participate in research which now has over 200 patients enrolled. In addition to the neglect research my lab is interested in how the brain perceives time and integrates temporal perception with spatial processes. We are also exploring the consequences of traumatic brain injury (usually from acceleration/deceleration injuries) on measures of sustained and transient attention and the more general experience of boredom. This work is also developing definitions of boredom and is exploring the physiological signature of the experience (i.e., using galvanic skin responses, heart rate and cortisol measures).
Funding sources: NSERC, CFI, HSF, ERA
Neurological Patient Database website http://npd.uwaterloo.ca/
Danckert Attention and Action Group: http://thedaag.uwaterloo.ca/Mike Dixon, Professor
(BSc, Trent; MA, PhD, Concordia)
My research entails two distinct research programs. The first concerns investigating people with synaesthesia – a condition where ordinary stimuli lead to extraordinary experiences. We have conducted research on numerous forms of synaesthesia including grapheme-colour synaesthesia where ordinary black digits or letters are experienced in colour, and time-space synaesthesia where time units, like months of the year, are associated with highly specific spatial locations (e.g., June is 30 degrees to the left of midline). A second research program involves investigating gambling behaviour. Specifically we have looked at some of the features of slot machines that make them so alluring, and for a small set of the population, so addictive.
Funding sources: Ontario Problem Gambling Research Centre; NSERC; Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada
Problem gambling web page: http://problemgambling.uwaterloo.ca/
Synaesthesia Research Centre web page: http://watarts.uwaterloo.ca/~src/home.htm
Colin Ellard, Associate Professor
(BSc, Toronto; PhD, U. Western Ontario)
I am interested in how the organization and appearance of natural and built spaces affects movement, wayfinding, emotion and physiology. My approach to these questions is strongly multidisciplinary and is informed by collaborations with architects, artists, planners, and health professionals. Current studies include investigations of the psychology of residential design, wayfinding at the urban scale, restorative effects of exposure to natural settings, and comparative studies of defensive responses. My research methods include both field investigations and studies of human behaviour in immersive virtual environments.
Funding sources: NSERC
Research Laboratory for Immersive Virtual Environments web page: http://virtualpsych.uwaterloo.ca/mainpage2.htm
Myra Fernandes, Associate Professor
(BSc, Waterloo; MA, PhD, Toronto)
My research program involves developing an understanding of the cognitive processes, and brain regions, involved in memory and language. I am interested in knowing how we encode new information, how it is organized and represented in the brain, and how we reactivate the information during retrieval. I am particularly interested in how these change as people age. I evaluate the ability of young adults and seniors to carry out a memory task under conditions in which there is another on-going task competing for their attention. The amount and type of interference observed allows one to infer the cognitive resources and components required for the two tasks, and can provide insight into human memory processing. I also use neuroimaging (fMRI) to identify the brain regions and networks (using PLS) mediating memory processing; these are used to determine how the strategy and brain regions contributing to memory change as we age. A related research interest lies in understanding how different types of information (words, numbers, symbols, spatial layouts) are represented and organized in the brain, through the use of behavioural paradigms, fMRI, and neural network models. My other line of research examines the relationship between neuropsychological and neuroimaging methods of evaluation of language localization.
Funded by NSERC, CIHR, and Ontario Ministry of Research & Innovation.Click here to go to the Lab web site: http://fernandeslab.uwaterloo.ca/
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Roxane Itier, Assistant Professor
B.Sc (Grenoble, France), M.Sc. (Paris, France), PhD (Toulouse, France)
My interests are in Cognitive Neuroscience with a focus on Social Cognition and its neural bases. My research investigates the temporal dynamics of the neural networks underlying face processing, in particular the perception and recognition of face identity, facial expressions and gaze direction. I am particularly interested in the central role of eyes in these processes, whether there exists a specific brain network dedicated to the detection and processing of eyes in the environment, and how this possible system interacts with the neural network subserving face processing. Recently we have started work investigating the relationships between gaze processing and facial expression, attention and theory of mind, the ability to infer and understand the mental states of others such as intentions and desires. I am also interested in how these cognitive abilities and their underlying brain networks develop over the lifespan, and what role they play in pathologies in which social cognition appears to go awry such as in Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs). My research program includes behavioral testing, EEG, MEG, fMRI, eye tracking and neuropsychological studies.
Funding
My research is funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI), the Ontario Research Fund (ORF) and the Canada Research Chair program (CRC).
Website links
To go to the Face Lab website, click here: Face and Social Cognition Lab To go to the EEG/ERP Labs website, click here: EEG/ERP Labs To download PDF articles from the Itier lab, click here: Itier Lab publicationsDaniel Smilek, Associate Professor
(BSc, McMaster; MA, PhD, Waterloo)
My research focuses on understanding how attention and perception operate in everyday situation. I address this general issue using two distinct and complementary approaches. The first approach involves using standard laboratory tasks to uncover the cognitive and neural mechanisms that underlie attention and perception. The second approach involves observing and describing how attention and perception operate as individuals engage in purposeful activities in their natural environments.
My research not only considers the usual experiences that are associated with attention and perception but also various unusual experiences, such as those that accompany a fascinating condition known as synaesthesia. I use a broad range of methods including behavioural testing, neuro-imaging, naturalistic observation, and analysis of subjective reports. Often projects also involve the development of new measures and analysis techniques.
Funding Sources: NSERC
Synaesthesia Research Group web page: http://www.synaesthesia.uwaterloo.ca/
Joint-appointed Faculty from the Department of Health Studies and Gerontology
Suzanne Tyas, Associate Professor
BSc (Guelph), MSc PhD (University of Western Ontario)
My background is a little different from other faculty in Psychology as I am an epidemiologist and hold joint appointments in the Dept. of Psychology and the Dept. of Health Studies and Gerontology. My degrees are in Human Biology (BSc), Pathology (MSc) and Epidemiology and Biostatistics (PhD). My research areas reflect this background and focus on predictors of late-life cognition from an epidemiologic perspective. My long-term goal is to identify strategies that preserve intact cognition and thus increase the likelihood of healthy aging for all. To meet this goal, I investigate predictors of late-life cognition, from intact cognition to cognitive impairment. Identifying risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease and protective factors for healthy aging provides clues as to how intact cognition is preserved or lost; investigating factors that precipitate transitions in cognitive status provides further evidence. My primary interest is in vascular risk factors as they play a pivotal and potentially modifiable role in cognitive impairment. I am also interested in how early and late-life factors interact and the subsequent impact of this interaction on cognitive function.
Funding Sources • CIHR • Change Foundation • National Institutes of Health, U.S. • U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration • Alzheimer’s Association, U.S
Cross-appointed Faculty from the University of Waterloo
Eric Roy, Professor, Kinesiology
(BSc, Waterloo; MPE, British Columbia; PhD, Waterloo)
My work is aimed at understanding the neurocognitive and neuromotor mechanisms underlying how movements are learned and controlled. My approach involves examining normal healthy persons as well as those with neurologic disorders such as stroke, Alzheimer's disease and Down syndrome. Since many of these disorders arise in older adults, my work also focuses on the effects of aging. Prehension, movement sequencing, limb gesturing and tool use and disruptions to these movements seen in various neurologic disorders are all of interest. One line of research is concerned with identifying the basis of manual asymmetries in performance and how these asymmetries vary with and are related to measures of hand preference. Another focus is on apraxia, a disorder in limb gesturing and tool use. We are using a cognitive neuropsychological model of apraxia to identify disruptions at different stages of gesture production and then to relate these to lesion localization in the brain. A more applied aspect of my research builds upon my expertise as a clinical neuropsychologist and involves studying the effects of concussion and traumatic brain injury. One focus is on concussion in hockey. This work involves studying the situations in which concussions occur and the effect these concussions have on cognitive and motor functioning. The aim is to develop more effective prevention and return-to-play guidelines.
Funding Sources: NSERC, HSF
