The 1st VERE PhD Symposium will be held at the
Edifici del Teatre, Psychology Faculty,
Campus Mundet of Universitat de Barcelona (how to get there),
the 8th of October 2011.
11:00 – 12:00 Key Note Conference: Navigation, body representation, and sensory development
Dr. Prof. Marko Nardini
Dep. Visual Neuroscience. Institute of Ophthalmology. University College London
ABSTRACT:
Development of Multisensory Perception and Action in Space
Having multiple sources of sensory information about events in the world (e.g. both seeing and hearing an object) can help to optimise our percepts and actions. Research has shown that human adults’ sensory and motor systems are optimised for using multisensory information in a variety of ways. How do these optimisations emerge over the course of development? I will review recent research on development of multisensory processing, both in active tasks such as spatial navigation, and in more basic psychophysical tasks such as 3D shape judgement.
These tasks have investigated development of several different properties of multisensory perception, action, and decision networks, from optimal use of current sensory information, to use of prior knowledge to interpret uncertain information and computation of expected value to maximise gain. In a range of tasks, perception, action and decision networks supporting optimal use of multisensory information seem to develop quite slowly throughout childhood. This extended process of maturation hints at the challenges in learning to combine multisensory inputs appropriately to guide perception and action.
These challenges include determining the correspondences between different sensory inputs, their relative reliabilities, and the optimal decision rules for combining them to accomplish particular tasks.
BIO
Marko Nardini research is focused on:
- Visual development: Normal and abnormal development of retinal and cortical vision
- Multisensory development: How do we learn to combine sensory information sources?
- Spatial development: How do we learn to represent spatial locations in memory?
CV
1998 BA, Oxford (Philosophy & Psychology).
1999-05 RA, VDU, UCL, with Janette Atkinson &Oliver Braddick.
2006 PhD, UCL (Psychology), with Janette Atkinson & Neil Burgess.
2006-07 Post-doc, Oxford, with Oliver Braddick.
2008-09 Post-doc, CBCD, with Denis Mareschal.
What is Vere?
VERE is an Integrated Project funded by the European Seventh Framework Program, Future and Emerging Technologies (FET), Grant Agreement Number 257695.
VERE aims at dissolving the boundary between the human body and surrogate representations in immersive virtual reality and physical reality. Dissolving the boundary involves inducing the illusion that your surrogate representation is your own body, where resulting behavior and thoughts correspond to this illusory bodily transfer.
