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• neuroscience and mental health
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Traumatic Brain Injury

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.

1. An investigation of the effect of long-term visual deprivation on perceptual functional when sight is restored.
Although there have been significant advances in ophthalmology in recent years, allowing for full sight recovery following extended periods of blindness, little is known about the effects on function in sensory regions of the brain. Our research suggests evidence for a full recovery of some perceptual tasks following sight restoration but not all. The research will involve the development of sensitive measures of perception, including multisensory perception, that will allow us to track and assess recovery following sight restoration in a number of patients.

2. Development of sensitive measures of perceptual function for use in clinical assessments following brain injury.
Our research has revealed important individual differences in multi sensory perception. These differences are often related to the underlying integrity of the neural systems, suggesting that behavioural performance can act as an important biomarker to cerebral health. The project will involve identifying behavioural tests suitable for assessing perceptual abilities in patients with mild to severe brain injuries, including concussion and TBI, that can rapidly identify normal from impaired processing.

3. Rehabilitating perceptual function in older brains.
We have established that the older brain maintains sufficient cortical plasticity to allow it to reconfigure following learning. The aim of this project is to work together with industry to design and validate Serious Games aimed at rehabilitating specific perceptual functions in older adults (e.g. face recognition, spatial cognition) in an engaging manner. The first stage will involve identifying the particular functions most affected by the ageing process. The next stage will be to contribute to the design and development of a serious game, using virtual reality, that is targeted at improving perception during ageing.