Members of my laboratory group conduct experiments to investigate human visual attention and cognitive control. We are interested how goals, expectations, and intentions can modulate sensory input (via acts of selective attention) and how they flexibly reconfigure perceptual, cognitive, and response mechanisms to carry out simple tasks. We measure both behavior (using response time and accuracy) and brain activity (using fMRI in the F. M. Kirby Research Center for Functional Brain Imaging) to uncover the psychological and neural basis of attention and cognitive control.
We have recently been investigating the voluntary deployment of attention to spatial locations, features, objects, and sensory modalities, as well as involuntary attentional capture in vision. We have begun to investigate cognitive control during task switching using fMRI. We are also using fMRI retintopic mapping techniques to measure adult coritcal plasticity in patients with macular degeneration or retinitis pigmentosa.
Graduate students and postdocs in my lab receive training in a variety of methods, including the use of a computer-based experimental psychology laboratory, and the design, implementation, and analysis of fMRI studies of the human visual system. Together with the other core faculty actively using fMRI in their research (Susan Courtney, Amy Shelton, and Craig Stark) I offer frequent courses, seminars, and journal clubs that provide a lively research environment for learning about theory and methods in cognitive neuroscience. Students in my laboratory also benefit from advanced coursework and interdisciplinary research experience in collaborating laboratories in the departments of Cognitive Science and Neuroscience, in the Center for Imaging Science, the Wilmer Eye Institute, and in the Zanvyl Kreiger Mind-Brain Institute at JHU.