Goldsmiths, University of London

Graduate Student, Psychology

Thesis Title: Attentional competition of visual stimuli in healthy individuals and neurological patients

About

My research interests concern visuospatial cognition, in particular the impairments found in neurological patients with spatially specific disorders of attention.  The focus of my research is the condition known as visuospatial extinction in which patients are able to detect a single, briefly presented stimulus in either of the visual fields but, when presented with simultaneous bilateral stimuli, fail to detect (or ‘extinguish’) the stimulus in the left visual field.  This impairment is commonly found following damage to the right parietal area.  My research to date has been applied to simulating extinction-like responses in healthy adults using both bottom-up and top-down paradigms.  I am particularly interested in any effects of lateral asymmetry in attention and the effects of competing visual stimuli.  My research focuses on investigating these effects in both healthy individuals and neurological patients.