Animal Behaviour – Cognition / Perception – Evolution & Social Behaviour

evolution and neurobiology of depression, evolved functions of rumination, suicide, and serotonin, costs and benefits of antidepressants

Animal Behaviour – Evolution & Social Behaviour

What pre-requisites do you look for when evaluating a potential thesis student?

I look for folks who have a strong interest in understanding animal behaviour from an evolutionary and ecological basis. Taking previous courses in animal behaviour, evolution, ecology, environmental sciences and genetics can be a really asset for the work we do. For the research that goes on in my lab, a degree of comfort for the outdoors and especially around the water can be helpful as can being able to drive (we do field work, sometimes in remote places).

What information are you going to want from a student who is interested in working in your lab?

CV or resume and a transcript plus a short email saying what aspect of the research program they are most interested in.

How do you want to be contacted?

Email please!

evolutionary behavioural ecology, animal behaviour lab and fieldwork, breeding system evolution, evolution of cooperation and social behaviour, impacts of contaminants on behaviour, physiology and community structure, cichlids, great lake fish and toadfish

Cognition / Perception – Systems & Behavioural Neuroscience

What pre-requisites do you look for when evaluating a potential thesis student?

The minimum CA of a 4D09 is 8.5; the miminum CA for a 4D06 is 8.0.

What information are you going to want from a student who is interested in working in your lab?

Student’s grades will be retried by the ballot system once the balloting process is completed.

How do you want to be contacted?

I will evaluate applications on the ballot system once the ballot closes. You may contact me by e-mail, however, I may not respond until I evaluate the applications submitted through the ballot.

Computational and cognitive neuroscience of leaing and memory

Cognition / Perception – Systems & Behavioural Neuroscience

What pre-requisites do you look for when evaluating a potential thesis student?

Students should have good grades in perception and/or neuroscience courses (e.g., 2E03, 2F03, 3D03).

What information are you going to want from a student who is interested in working in your lab?

It would be helpful to receive a copy of your transcript and a brief description of your reasons for wanting to join my lab.

How do you want to be contacted?

Please email me and make it clear in the subject heading that you want to do a thesis or independent study.

visual perception, psychophysics, face perception, perceptual leaing, aging & vision, evoked potentials, ideal observer theory

Systems & Behavioural Neuroscience – Research & Clinical Training

What pre-requisites do you look for when evaluating a potential thesis student?

Students interested in independent (PNB 3QQ3) or thesis study (PNB 4DD6/4D09) in the lab should contact Dr. Bock by email before the ballot process.  Please describe your research interests and potential experience in your email, and attach an unofficial copy of your transcripts.

The laboratory hosts projects on a variety of subjects related to neuroscience with experiments covering magnetic resonance imaging in animals and humans, and computational image analysis.

Healthy and disrupted brain structure and composition in humans and animals measured with Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)

Cognition / Perception – Research & Clinical Training

What pre-requisites do you look for when evaluating a potential thesis student?

A strong academic background.

What information are you going to want from a student who is interested in working in your lab?

Please send your transcript and a CV.

http://neuroarts.org/

How do you want to be contacted?

Email

Neuroscience of the arts and vocalization, narrative models of cognition, cross-cultural analysis of music

Steven Brown is the director of the NeuroArts Lab in the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, and associated with the McMaster Institute for Music and the Mind and the LIVE Lab. The lab is devoted to developing a holistic understanding of the neural, cognitive and evolutionary foundations of the arts, creativity, and aesthetics, including: music, dance, the dramatic arts, the visual arts. A unique evolutionary focus of the lab is a revival of comparative musicology studies, including an exploration of the geography and cultural evolution of world musical styles.

Animal Behaviour – Evolution & Social Behaviour

What pre-requisites do you look for when evaluating a potential thesis student?

A mark of at least 10 in Animal Behaviour PSYCH 2TT3 (PSYCH 2XC3). I would prefer students who have taken Animal Behaviour Laboratory PSYCH 3S03 and other courses with an evolutionary and biological focus.

What information are you going to want from a student who is interested in working in your lab?

Please email me with a brief description of yourself and relevant background, and a complete set of informal transcripts included in the email.

How do you want to be contacted?

Please e-mail me only if you meet the above criteria.

Cognitive Ecology: the mechanisms, ecology and evolution of cognition, and effects of cognitive traits on animal behaviour, ecology and evolution

We examine the evolutionary biology of cognition, defined as the neuronal processes concerned with the acquisition, retention and use of information. Current research by my students and myself include information use in social behaviour, aggression, and sexual conflict, and evolutionary biology of expertise and perseverance.

Animal Behaviour – Systems & Behavioural Neuroscience

What pre-requisites do you look for when evaluating a potential thesis student?

A mark of at least 9 in PSYCH 3A03 (Audition) and PSYCH 2F03 (Fundamentals of Neuroscience). I also prefer students who have taken Animal Behaviour PSYCH 2TT3 (PSYCH 2XC3) and who have taken courses in biology, physics, and chemistry.

What information are you going to want from a student who is interested in working in your lab?

A CV (or resume), complete unofficial undergraduate transcript(s), and a short email explaining your research interests and how they ! relate to my research program. Please also include a brief statement outlining your career goals after graduation.

How do you want to be contacted?

Please contact me only if you meet the above pre-requisite criteria.

Our research is on the links between hearing and behaviour.

Insects and bats are ideal subjects for addressing questions on the physiology of hearing, animal bioacoustics, and the neural control of acoustically-evoked behaviour because the ecological and evolutionary context of their auditory behaviours are well understood (e.g. mate-calling, predator avoidance, prey detection). Bats and insects are also a model system for studying the sensory ecology of predator-prey interactions. Like other invertebrates, insects have relatively simple nervous systems and behaviour pattes, thus specific neurons and cellular mechanisms controlling or correlating with behaviour can often be identified. Among mammals, echolocating bats are an exceptionally interesting and useful model system for studying hearing and perception because the significance of biosonar to the natural orienting and hunting behaviour of bats is also well understood. Moreover, the components of the bat?s central auditory system are fundamentally mammalian, hence, auditory processing mechanisms that can be readily discovered in bats are likely to be of general relevance to all mammals. Our research employs a variety of techniques to examine the relationship between hearing and behaviour. My behavioural work uses psychophysical tests to study prey detection by bats, acoustic playback experiments to evoke and manipulate acoustic and auditory behaviour, and sound recording and signal analyses to measure critical features of sound and to examine variability in signal design when bats are challenged to detect signals in different tasks and thus are faced with varying perceptual demands. My electrophysiological research employs single unit extracellular recording in the inferior colliculus of the big brown bat (Eptesicus fuscus) to examine how the interplay of temporal pattes of neural excitation and inhibition create auditory neurons at higher levels in the central auditory system with specialized response properties that serve as auditory filters (adaptations) for processing temporal features of sound. I also have experience with both extracellular and intracellular recording in moths and katydids.

Animal Behaviour – Evolution & Social Behaviour

What pre-requisites do you look for when evaluating a potential thesis student?

The minimum CA of a 4D09 is 8.5; the miminum CA for a 4D06 is 8.0.  

I’m looking for students interested in Voice and Personality, Voice and Cognition, and Acoustical Analysis. We have a strong focus on fighting gender bias and racism in psychology.

What information are you going to want from a student who is interested in working in your lab?

Students interested in the lab should provide their CV, Grades, and a short statement about why they are interested in joining the lab, and what avenues of research they’re interested in.

How do you want to be contacted?

I would like to be contacted by email at feinberg at mcmaster dot ca. Feel free to contact me at your convenience, and if for some reason I don’t write back right away, please email again.

The Voice Research Laboratory is committed to discovering how we use voices and faces to perceive the world

Systems & Behavioural Neuroscience

What pre-requisites do you look for when evaluating a potential thesis student?

– Mark of at least 10 in Fundamentals of Neuroscience, plus a strong background in biology, physics, or chemistry. 
– Good quantitative skills and good manual dexterity are extremely helpful 

What information are you going to want from a student who is interested in working in your lab?

Please read the “Information for Undergraduates” page on the lab website and follow the instructions given there.

How do you want to be contacted?

See above.

– Developmental plasticity
– Inhibitory synapse refinement
– Cellular neuroscience
– Circuits and systems neuroscience
– Physiology (synaptic, sensory)
– Anatomy (incl. super-resolution optical microscopy) 

Cognition / Perception Computational Neuroscience Systems & Behavioural Neuroscience

What pre-requisites do you look for when evaluating a potential thesis student?

– Students with excellent grades in neuroscience and perception courses, particularly PNB 2XB3.
– Given the nature of my lab’s research, I am further inclined towards students who have performed well in math and physics courses, and who have some computer coding experience.

What information are you going to want from a student who is interested in working in your lab?

Please email me your unofficial transcript, a brief description of your academic background, and your reasons for wishing to join my lab. Which aspects of my lab’s research most interest you?
Upon receipt of your email, I will make a preliminary evaluation, and if you seem to be a potentially suitable candidate for my lab, I will email you back with a series of questions for you to answer. These questions will involve considerable work on your part. For instance, I will ask you to read a particular research article that my lab has published and to answer questions about that article, so that I can further evaluate your ability to think creatively and critically about the sort of research that my lab pursues. After I receive your responses, I may contact you for an individual meeting.

Please email me. Please include “! Thesis request” or “Independent study request” in the subject line of your email, as appropriate.

See above.

We take for granted our ability to perceive the external world, but how does the nervous system accomplish this remarkable feat? Perception begins with physical stimuli that activate sensory cells in the eye, ear, or skin, but it ends with an inference made by the brain. Our sensory organs encode physical stimuli as pathes of electrical impulses that enter the central nervous system, where our neural machinery mysteriously works “behind the scenes” to decode those impulse pathes in order to generate perceptual conclusions. How does this happen? Our laboratory investigates these questions with a focus on the sense of touch. We investigate the full gamut of discriminative touch, which begins with physical stimulation (spatially and/or temporally varying forces on the skin) and ends with perception (the brain’s interpretation of the stimulus). Using a combination of experimental and theoretical approaches, we consider perception from the points of view of physics (the mechanical stimulus to the skin), neurophysiology (the neural response), and probability calculus (the perceptual inference). Our research methods range from cutaneous measurement to psychophysical testing to Bayesian computational modeling. We enjoy studying perception in its myriad forms. We attempt to understand fascinating phenomena such as perceptual leaing, sensory compensation in blindness, sex differences in tactile acuity, the sense of touch during development and aging, and sensory illusions. An ultimate goal of our research is to formulate mathematically accurate models of human perception that have the predictive power and elegance of the equations of physics.

– Tactile psychophysics
– The neural basis of tactile perception
– Perceptual cue combination
– Perceptual illusions
– Perception as Bayesian inference

Cognition / Perception – Developmental Psychology – Systems & Behavioural Neuroscience – Research & Clinical Training

His interests broadly encompass the neurological foundations of human emotion and cognition, with a particular focus on neurodevelopmental disorders and psychopathology. Central to this work is the development of novel experimental and theoretical tools that lead to a deeper understanding of how emotion and cognition are mapped onto the developing brain, and how underlying neural systems aggregate into functionally connected networks. His research places an emphasis on the development of strong validated behavioural paradigms and draws upon a range of imaging methodologies, including functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy, Diffusion Tensor Imaging, MRI Cortical Thickness & Volumetry, Positron Tomography and Electroencephalography

Cognition / Perception

cognitive psychology, psycholinguistics, language production, errors in normal and pathological speech

My research in the Cognitive Science Laboratory looks at the psycholinguistics of language production. Our ability to rapidly and effortlessly transform thoughts into a sequence of meaningful sounds is a remarkable feat, given the incredible complexity of this task.

Currently Not Available for Supervising Students

My expertise is varied with research interests in the areas of effective pedagogical practices, student mental health, and hormones and behaviour.

What pre-requisites do you look for when evaluating a potential thesis student?

Excellent grades in core psychology courses (especially 2r3, 2RR3), previous lab study or research experience is an assett.

What information are you going to want from a student who is interested in working in your lab?

CV, transcript (unofficial is fine so student doesn’t have to pay), cover letter outlining why research interest with me and how their interests/skills match up.

How do you want to be contacted?

Email contact with above support materials is fine.

Assessing the Impact of Leaing Objective Format on Knowledge Retention

Cognition / Perception

What pre-requisites do you look for when evaluating a potential thesis student?

Students interested in doing an honours thesis in my lab must have taken Psych 2H03 or 2XA3, at a minimum. It’s helpful if they’ve also taken Psych 3VV3, and ideal if they’ve also taken the lab course I offer in Human Memory and Cognition (Psych 3V03). 

What information are you going to want from a student who is interested in working in your lab?

I’ll want to look at a transcript, and it helps to have students e-mail me with a brief description of their research interests and long-term goals.

Please email me. Please include “! Thesis request” or “Independent study request” in the subject line of your email, as appropriate.

E-mail contact is preferred, after which we may set up an individual appointment to talk further.

Attention and visual perception

Attention, memory, and cognitive control are the focus of research conducted in our lab. We look at how selection of visual information in the world around us is controlled in part by the goals and intentions of observers, but also implicitly by memories of past experiences. This theoretical issue plays itself out across a wide range of selective attention and visual search tasks used in our studies. 

Cognition / Perception – Systems & Behavioural Neuroscience

What pre-requisites do you look for when evaluating a potential thesis student?

The minimum CA for 4D09/4D06 is 8.5

What information are you going to want from a student who is interested in working in your lab?

Student’s grades will be retried by the ballot system once the balloting process is completed.

How do you want to be contacted?

I will evaluate applications on the ballot system once the ballot closes. You may contact me by e-mail, however, I may not respond until I evaluate the applications submitted through the ballot.

Neurodevelopment of humans and animal models, neural mechanisms regulating neuroplasticity using postmortem tissue, typical and atypical development

Together with our students we study the role of early visual experience on the development of vision and the visual cortex. In particular we are interested in the visual and neural changes associated with lazy-eye (amblyopia). Lazy-eye is one of the most common neurodevelopmental disorders in children. We use a variety of neurobiological, computational, and psychophysics techniques in our experiments. Our studies explore the development of the visual cortex from new perspectives. We are searching for and finding clues that help us understand how the brain develops and new directions for treating lazy-eye.

Cognition / Perception – Evolution & Social Behaviour – Systems & Behavioural Neuroscience – Research & Clinical Training

Self-Other Processing & Empathy, Power & the Brain, Sense of Agency, Social Diversity and Human Social Dynamics in Hierarchical Structures

Professor Obhi completed his PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London (UCL) where he worked under the supervision of Professor Patrick Haggard on sensorimotor control and volition. Following his PhD, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow with Professor Melvyn A. Goodale at what is now the Centre for Brain and Mind at Western University, in London Ontario. Dr. Obhi currently runs the Social Brain, Body and Action Lab at McMaster University.

Dr. Obhi contributes to the scientific community by serving as a Co-Editor at Experimental Brain Research and a review editor at Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. He was previously an Associate Editor at the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, Cognitive Neuroscience and Acta Psychologica. Professor Obhi also serves as McMaster’s first Associate Vice-President Research for Society and Impact.

human sexual attitudes and behaviours

I completed my graduate work at the University of Pennsylvania, under the direction of the late John Sabini. My research program has focussed on sex drive and its correlates: What is sex drive? How can we measure it without depending on contaminating information, such as whether one is able to procure a sex partner? How does sex drive affect our attitudes (e.g., opinions about the morality of various sex acts) and behaviours? (e.g., likelihood of engaging in casual sex).

Neurophysiology and neurotransmission; sensory receptors; experiential learning; curriculum development

Developmental Psychology – Evolution & Social Behaviour

What pre-requisites do you look for when evaluating a potential thesis student?

The minimum CA of 8.5.

What information are you going to want from a student who is interested in working in your lab?

Student’s grades will be retried by the ballot system once the balloting process is completed. In addition, I will look for evidence that we have research interests in common, either as a description on the ballot system or in an individual interview.

How do you want to be contacted?

You may contact me by e-mail, however, I may not respond until I evaluate the applications submitted through the ballot.

Evolutionary psychological perspectives on social perceptual development, social cognitive development, theory of mind and autism

Our work at the Rutherford Lab is experimental psychology motivated by evolutionary theory. What are the psychological adaptations shared by all humans that solve the adaptive problems of our ancestral environment? Specifically, we work on the questions of Social Perception and Social Perceptual Development. We study animacy perception, because discriminating what in the world is animate is the first developmental step in social cognition. We study face perception and the perception of emotional facial expressions, and we are exploring the development of categorical perception of emotional expressions. Once we know what social perceptual skills develop in the first years of life, we can develop tests for atypical development. Using eye tracking technology, we are finding very early markers of autism spectrum disorders, including how infants at risk for autism use motion information in animacy perception, the perception of faces, and the perception of emotional facial expressions, and how infants use facial eye gaze to capture attention.

Developmental Psychology – Evolution & Social Behaviour – Systems & Behavioural Neuroscience – Research & Clinical Training

What pre-requisites do you look for when evaluating a potential thesis student?

The minimum CA of a 4D09 is 8.5; the miminum CA for a 4D06 is 8.0.

What information are you going to want from a student who is interested in working in your lab?

Student’s grades will be retried by the ballot system once the balloting process is completed.

How do you want to be contacted?

I will evaluate applications on the ballot system once the ballot closes. You may contact me by e-mail, however, I may not respond until I evaluate the applications submitted through the ballot.

Developmental psychophysiology, social emotional development in children, neural basis of human emotion

Cognition / Perception – Developmental Psychology – Systems & Behavioural Neuroscience

What pre-requisites do you look for when evaluating a potential thesis student?

I look for students who have a strong background in perception, cognition, and neuroscience. You should have completed an upper year lab course in one of these topics and one or more upper year lecture courses on similar or related topics. I expect students to have a strong work ethic, good organizational skills and be self-motivated. A good CA is also desirable (9+).

What information are you going to want from a student who is interested in working in your lab?

I expect students to send me a covering letter outlining why they want to work in my lab specifically, what expertise they have that make my lab well suited to them, and what they hope to gain during the Thesis experience. outlining future goals also helps me gauge how serious a student is. Additionally, students should send a cv (i.e., a resume), and an unofficial transcript.

How do you want to be contacted?

Email

Crossmodal temporal processing, memory and visual search, varieties and effects of attention

Cognition / Perception – Systems & Behavioural Neuroscience

What pre-requisites do you look for when evaluating a potential thesis student?

What information are you going to want from a student who is interested in working in your lab?

Transcript and a resume

How do you want to be contacted?

email

visual perception, multisensory processing, visual motor control, locomotion, visual attention, driving, implicit leaing, spatial memory

Cognition / Perception – Developmental Psychology – Systems & Behavioural Neuroscience – Music Cognition

What pre-requisites do you look for when evaluating a potential thesis student?

Research in the Auditory Development Lab focusses on auditory development and the neuroscience of music cognition. We study infants’ and children’s perception of pitch, tonality, timing, and rhythm, with interests in neuroplasticity, the role of music in social interaction between parents and infants, and developmental disorders. I also direct the LIVELab, a unique research-concert hall with high acoustic control, that is equipped with multi-person motion capture and EEG for studying how performers and audiences interact, and how music can be used to promote health and well-being.

What information are you going to want from a student who is interested in working in your lab?

CV and transcript

How do you want to be contacted?

Please e-mail me.

Development of auditory perception

In the Auditory Development Lab we study the perception of sound in infants, children, and adults, as well as the acquisition of music and language. We are interested in what infants perceive when they listen to speech and music, how this changes as they grow, and what influences how sound perception develops.

Cognition / Perception – Developmental Psychology – Systems & Behavioural Neuroscience

What Pre-Requisites Do You Look For When Evaluating A Potential Thesis Student?
Students should have good grades in perception and/or neuroscience courses (e.g., 2E03, 2F03, 3D03).  Statistical/computational/coding skills are an asset.

What Information Are You Going To Want From A Student Who Is Interested In Working In Your Lab?
It would be helpful to receive a copy of your transcript and a brief description of your reasons for wanting to join my lab.

How Do You Want To Be Contacted?
Please email me and make it clear in the subject heading that you want to do a thesis or independent study.

Vision, cognitive neuroscience, EEG, aging, face perception, perceptual leaing, neural plasticity, Alzheimer’s and related dementias, neurotechnology

Cognition / Perception – Developmental Psychology

Infants, visual perception, Face perception, Top-down perceptual modulation, Infants’ social biases, Eye-tracking, functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS)

Animal Behaviour – Cognition / Perception – Developmental Psychology – Evolution & Social Behaviour – Systems & Behavioural Neuroscience

Integrative neurobiology of psychiatric disorders, molecular biology, cellular and synaptic physiology, circuits and network, neurodevelopmental disorders, functional magnetic resonance imaging, lightsheet microscopy, social behaviour, disease modeling in animals

The brain controls behaviour in an extremely complex manner, involving various processes at molecular, cellular, circuit, and network levels. In our lab, we use a multi-level, integrative research strategy to study how gene mutations associated with psychiatric disorders affect each of these neurobiological levels, and their contributions to disrupted social behaviour. In particular, we focus on the following questions using genetic models of autism spectrum disorders (ASD):
1.    What are the potential mechanisms by which ASD gene mutations impair oxytocin signaling in the brain, and how are they linked to the social symptoms of ASD?
2.    100s of genes have been identified to be associated with ASD. On which neurobiological pathways do these genes converge, and how are they connected to behaviour? 

Not Supervising Students Winter 2024, Spring/Summer 2024, or Fall 2024 semesters

Research Interests: Mental health and wellbeing, especially social anxiety.
– My research interests are in the areas of mental health and wellbeing, particularly the topics of social anxiety, generalized anxiety, depression, positive psychology interventions, and pedagogy which supports wellbeing.  
– My research to date has focused on mechanisms of action in social anxiety, particularly in subclinical samples. I am also interested in self-help interventions, including mindfulness-based strategies. 
 – Students should be aware that as a teaching professor, I do not have a research lab; therefore, I am limited in the number of students I can take on at any given time. Also, please note that I do not supervise graduate students. 

What pre-requisites do you look for when evaluating a potential research or thesis student?
Students interested in doing research with me must have a strong academic background and have earned 80% or higher in PSYCH2AP3, at a minimum. It’s helpful if they’ve also taken PSYCH2B03, and ideal if they’ve also taken PSYCH3BA3

What information are you going to want from a student who is interested in working with you?
Please send me your unofficial transcript. It’s also helpful to have students send a brief description of their experience, research interests, and long-term goals.

Please email me with a meaningful subject line (“Potential Thesis Student Request” or similar).
If you meet the above requirements, e-mail contact is preferred, after which we may set up an individual appointment to talk further.

Not Supervising Students Fall 2023/Winter 2024

Research:
Timing and rhythm in perception and action, psychophysics and computational modeling.

Thesis/QQ Students
Strong background in Python and/or R

Research Interests
Multi-modal attention; inter-personal timing and synchronization; physiological responses during musical engagement; computational modeling of musical expectations; affective computing; music information retrieval; multi-person adaptive music-making; altered states and subjective experience.

Learn more on our lab website! https://beatlab.mcmaster.ca/

Research methods
Eye-tracking; pupillometry; electroencephalography; peripheral physiology; psychophysics; computational modeling; embedded systems.

For the 2024-25 academic year, the lab is currently at capacity for students of all levels.

All undergraduates interested in becoming part of the lab in the 2025-26 academic year should read the information provided here: https://beatlab.mcmaster.ca/join.html#UG. For interested thesis students, be sure to fill out the PNB ballot which opens in winter term. Undergraduate thesis students from other disciplines (e.g., Neuroscience, CSE) should be in contact as early as possible in Winter term.

Graduate students interested in joining the lab should reach out via email. Let me know how your research interests align with the labs’ and propose potential projects. Please also include a CV and an example of research (e.g., paper, GitHub repository). Before reaching out, please read the information here: https://beatlab.mcmaster.ca/join.html#GS

Although in the distant past I conducted research in basic instrumental conditioning processes in small, furry animals, I have devoted my time for the past 25 years or so to undergraduate instruction.

Cognition / Perception – Systems & Behavioural Neuroscience

What pre-requisites do you look for when evaluating a potential thesis student?

Students should have a strong background in cognition, perception, and neuroscience, good grades in statistics, and a cumulative GPA of at least 10.0. Undergraduates work in teams with graduate students on EEG/ERP and behavioural projects, asking questions about cognitive and social aspects of leaing.

What information are you going to want from a student who is interested in working in your lab?

Please send your CV and transcripts and a brief statement about why you’d like to work in my lab.

How do you want to be contacted?

Please email me.

Attention, cognitive control, multisensory processing, self-motion perception, spatial navigation, full-motion driving simulator

We are a cognitive science research group in the department of Psychology, Neuroscience, and Behaviour at McMaster University. We investigate self-motion perception, multisensory integration, route navigation, cognitive benefits of mindfulness meditation, and other aspects of cognitive control using a motion simulator and scalp electrophysiology.

Daphne M. Maurer, FRSC
(PhD, Minnesota)
maurer@mcmaster.ca

I am retired but continue to do research and occasionally I supervise students’ projects. The aim of my research is to understand development—the way in which different types of experience effect change during normal development, how those changes are constrained by the biology of the organism, the way in which the nervous system is able to recover from some perturbations, and the limits to plasticity. To examine these questions about development, I study visual perception, both its development in children with normal eyes and its alteration in children with a history of visual deprivation from cataracts.

The normal development of perception. We investigated developmental changes involving visual capabilities mediated at different levels of the visual pathway: sensitivity to orientation and local motion, which are mediated mainly by the geniculatestriate pathway; integration of local elements into a global percept of form and a global direction of motion, which involve additional processing in extrastriate cortex; the perception of faces, which involves specialized mechansims in the temporal cortex; and the integration of the senses beyond the visual pathway. By using marker tasks for different parts of the visual pathway, we made inferences from the behavioural patte about the developing nervous system, and sometimes confirmed the inferences using event-related potentials and functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging. Our studies indicated that some capabilities are present during the first hour after birth, but that others, such as expertise in identifying faces, take more than 14 years to become adultlike.

The visual development of children treated for cataracts. At The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, we are studying the visual development of children who were deprived of normal visual input until they had surgery to remove dense central cataracts and were fitted with contact lenses. These children allow us to evaluate the effects of visual deprivation on development, including the influence of its timing and duration. We are following over 100 children, the largest research population of this type in the world. Current studies involve cross-model perception and integration.

The psychobiological roots of aesthetics. We normally assume that adults’ judgments of beauty are based on cultural stereotypes. Yet 2-month-old infants look longer at a face rated attractive by adults than at a face rated unattractive. Findings like these suggest that some of adults’ preferences are rooted in the way the human nervous system works. We conducted developmental and cross-cultural studies to identity the nature of the biological constraint.

Vision screening. About 15% of kindergarten children have visual deficits that are treatable but undiagnosed. We are researching the best tools for screening their vision and the practicality of implementing it in schools.

My interest in the development of perception led to a book with Charles Maurer, The World of the Newbo. In this we integrated the science of infant perception to work out what a young baby perceives from the baby’s perspective. It won the book award of the American Psychological Association and has been translated into five languages.

My interest in the roots of aesthetics led to a new and comprehensive framework that grounds aesthetics in the basics of physics and biology, and carries it through all art forms across cultures. This Charles Maurer and I adumbrated in the book Pretty Ugly: Why we like some songs, faces, foods, plays, pictures, poems, etc., and dislike others. This framework we are currently applying to human social behaviour in a book that we are tempted to entitle Prettier and Uglier.

Basic CV with list of publications.

Jennifer Nettleton
Academic Program Advisor
PC 109 – pnbadvis@mcmaster.ca

Taylor
Monday to Friday: 8:30am – 4:30pm
Lunch: 11:30am – 12:30pm Daily

Please send student queries and reimbursement requests to pnb@mcmaster.ca

This is subject to change for scheduled appointments and remote days

Please include your student number with all correspondence

Research Interests
Cognition / Perception – Systems & Behavioural Neuroscience

Description
– Music and the brain
– Neural mechanisms of rhythm perception and production
– The impact of music on brain and cognitive development
– Mobile Brain/Body Imaging of complex, interpersonal motor
skill learning
– Algorithms for analysis of neural recordings
– Neuromodulation 

Students Interested in Thesis/QQ
– Strong academic background
– Interest in quantitative and computational skills
– Motivation for research