Visual perception
Visual psychophysics, the quantification of visual perception, explores the complex interactions between the eye and the brain. This field has many practical applications to visual tasks such as driving, reading and visual search. The ability we have to detect, resolve and discriminate objects in the visual environment is quite unique. In assessing the limit of spatial vision the examiner seeks a result, which depends on a multitude of factors, and variables that may interact with the threshold, providing an increasingly challenging area in vision science.
Our research makes excellent translational use of the group’s combination of clinical expertise and research skills in visual psychophysics. All our investigations are non-invasive, as well as adding to basic science they also provide critical information regarding visual functioning in a number of clinical populations (amblyopia, migraine, dyslexia, TBI, stroke) informing clinical management and rehabilitative strategies.
The research involves a wide variety of complementary methods and approaches including computational theory, functional neuroimaging, psychophysics, neuropsychology and others. It illustrates perhaps more clearly than any other area of brain research, the overriding need to combine and coordinate these diverse efforts.
Current topics of interest in visual perception include:
- Motion perception
- Pattern recognition
- Image processing
- Visual function and testing in eye disease
- Perceptual learning
- Face and shape perception
- Perceptual organisation in amblyopia
- Colour vision
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