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Full NameProfessor Fiona Newell
Institute of Neuroscience, School of Psychology
Trinity College Dublin
Webpage:www.tcd.ie
Email Address:Email hidden; Javascript is required.
- neuroscience and mental health
- Other
Cognition; ageing and development; perceptual function and impairments
- Sports and Exercise Medicine
- Dementia
- Geriatric Medicine
- Neurology
- Neuropsychiatry
The Multisensory Cognition group, lead by Prof. Fiona Newell, is interested in elucidating human perceptual function in the healthy and diseased brain. Our goal is to understand how the human brain encodes, organises and interprets the information it receives from peripheral sensory systems in order to perceive a coherent world. Although this process is fundamental to our social and cognitive abilities, very little is understood about how perception is achieved. Yet, damage to our perceptual abilities can have devastating effects.
Our recent studies have involved the study of individual differences in perceptual function, such as the effect of long-term sensory deprivation, and include conditions from prosopagnosia (face blindness) to object agnosia following brain trauma. A large component of our research also involves investigating the genetic basis of perceptual abilities through case studies on prosopagnosia and synaesthesia. In recent years, we have investigated the role of ageing on perceptual abilities and found evidence to suggest that changes in perceptual abilities may act as an early precursor to subsequent changes in cognition. Consequently, we are currently developing better assessments, and rehabilitation protocols, that can be used in the clinic to maintain perceptual function in older adults.