CrossCogLab Logo


People        News        Research        Publications        Funding        Teaching

Crossmodal Cognition Laboratory Members:

PI: Michael J Proulx, PhD, Lecturer in Cognitive Psychology

Achille Pasqualotto, PhD, Marie Curie Postdoctoral Research Associate

Dave Brown, MRes, Postgraduate Student (PhD)

Navid Hajimirza, co-supervised Postgraduate Student (PhD in EECS with the Multimedia and Vision Research Group)

Mu-Yun Wang, co-supervised Postgraduate Student (PhD in Biology with the Chittka Lab)

Vivek Nityananda, PhD, Human Frontier and Marie Curie Postdoctoral Research Associate (co-supervised with the Chittka Lab)


BSc Project Students (2011-2012): Elisa Brann (Wellcome Trust Biomedical Vacation Scholar), Tamara Dancs, Alastair Haigh, Jade Lam, Benita Ogbodo, and Helen Zhou


NEWS:

Call for Blind Participants:

We are looking for volunteers for a study of cognition in blind persons. The study will involve coming to Queen Mary's campus and learning to remember object locations. If you are eligible, you will be invited to take part and remunerated for your time taking part in this study.

If you would like more information, please contact Dr Michael Proulx (m.proulx@qmul.ac.uk).

Proulx & Green, Journal of Vision

See with your ears?


Description: http://www.sbcs.qmul.ac.uk/images/53900.jpgA new device that links spy glasses, a webcam and a smart phone could make it easier for blind people to 'see' shapes by converting visual signals to auditory ones and sending them to another part of the brain. Dr Michael Proulx from SBCS demonstrated his research with the device, known as 'The vOICe' at the American Psychological Association meeting in Washington, DC, last week, where he received the Science Showcase Award. 

'The main thing is to work out how to make the brain and the technology meet in the middle,' Dr Peter Meijer, the inventor of The vOICe, said. 'The technology is mature, but we don't know how the brain deals with complex sounds.' Meijer said scientists like Proulx and others are learning that parts of the brain may be more plastic than we originally thought, and that areas where we process visual images may receive other sound and touch signals as well.

This story was reported on Discovery News and msnbc.com.

Do you have Synaesthesia?

What is Synaesthesia? Synaesthesia (or synesthesia) is a perceptual condition of mixed sensations: a stimulus in one sensory modality (e.g., hearing) involuntarily elicits a sensation/experience in another modality (e.g. vision). Likewise, perception of a form (e.g., a letter) may induce an unusual perception in the same modality (e.g. a colour). For example, some synaesthetes see these black letters as coloured letters. In fact we are particularly interested in synaesthetes who see letters and numbers as colours.

We are looking for volunteers for a study of perception in synaesthesia. The study will involve either looking at visual forms and making decisions about them. If you are eligible, you will be remunerated for your time taking part in this study.

If you think you might have synaesthesia, or would like more information, please contact Dr Michael Proulx (m.proulx@qmul.ac.uk).

Also: 

I am always interested in hearing from interested postdoctoral scholars, PhD students, and BSc research assistants.

Research Interests

My primary interest in psychology is cognition. Vision provides a convenient window into how the brain processes information because it is a well described sensory system at the physiological level and seems to be the most dominant sensory modality at the psychological level. At any given moment, more light is entering the retina from all areas of the visual field than can be processed. The world is full of non-visual sensory information as well. The auditory system can localize sounds; the tactile system can identify objects by shape. My research has advanced from first examining cognition and attentional control within the visual system to now examine how multisensory processing contributes to perception and cognition. Working with blind individuals in particular helps to reveal the role of visual experience for cognition and how the "visual" parts of the brain process other information in the absence of visual input. Much of this work has used a 'sensory-substitution' device (called ‘The vOICe’) that provides visual information by translating visual input into sound. I therefore study multiple sensory modalities and utilize multiple methods to best understand the psychological and neural underpinnings of cognition in human and non-human animals through collaborative studies on bees and non-human primates.

Publications

Funding Support:
 
Sasakawa American Psychological Association  Royal Society  Wellcome Trust   Marie Curie Actions (EU)  Human Frontier Science Program National Science Foundation (USA)

Teaching:

I received the Drapers' Award for Excellence in Teaching from Queen Mary University of London in 2011 (article on page 16). I am module organiser and lecturer for Cognitive Psychology (SBC201) and Personality & Individual Differences (SBC302). I provide tutorials on Essential Skills in Psychology, Integrative Studies in Psychological Sciences, and Intregrative Studies in Biological Sciences. I am a BSC third year research projects supervisor, currently for six BSc Psychology or BSc Biology with Psychology students. I also lecture on 'cognitive approaches to teaching' for new faculty. I have taught previously at Heinrich Heine University, Duesseldorf, Germany, and the Johns Hopkins University.


Crossmodal Cognition Laboratory logo

CrossCogLab updated 17 Jan 2012