Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

The general aim of my research is to further our understanding of the mechanisms in the human brain that mediate our perception of the visual world.  My research focuses on two main areas: 1) improving our understanding of the role and processing of colour through studies of visual texture perception, colour processing in peripheral vision, and the role of colour in memory; and 2) exploring the nature of our memory representations through studies of our ability to detect changes in scenes and studies of memory for colour.  In these investigations, the limits of human abilities are measured to assess what information the brain uses and how that information is processed by the brain.  These studies include assessments of individuals with intact abilities as well as those whose abilities are impaired.        Our ability to detect light is determined by the responses of three separate pathways or mechanisms in the visual system: a brightness pathway; a red-green pathway; and a blue-yellow pathway.  At the lowest levels of the visual system, there is clear evidence that these pathways are independent.  The first series of studies is directed at whether these pathways are independent at higher levels of the visual system (i.e., those responsible for texture perception).  The second set of studies aims to explore colour processing in peripheral vision, which may improve our ability to detect and monitor visual losses associated with diseases such as glaucoma.  The third line of studies is directed at understanding what we encode into memory and can access from the representations about the world around us.  The final studies investigate the conditions under which we encode into memory (and/or retrieve from memory) information about colour and whether there is functional specialization of colour categories in areas of the brain responsible for human memory.      These studies will increase our understanding of normal visual processing, improve our understanding of the organization of areas in the brain responsible for vision, improve our knowledge of our representations of the world around us, and provide us with information useful in the detection of visual disease and dysfunction.