Professor, Departments of Physiology and Pharmacology, Ophthalmology, Medical Biophysics and Psychology

My laboratory is part of the Centre for Brain and Mind. We explore the function of two important cortical areas, the ventral stream which specializes in the perception of visual objects and the dorsal stream which specializes in directing motor actions. Currently my laboratory is involved in three projects that use functional imaging of the human cortex to address the following issues:

Project 1. The Contribution of the Lateral Occiptal CortexTo Object Perception. The cortical visual motion system often facilitates object recognition such as when we spot an animal in the woods only when it moves.

Project 2. The Function of the Cortical Motion Complex in Humans. One of the key components of the dorsal action stream is the motion complex, an area in the medial temporal cortex that is specialized for motion. We are using fMRI to map the functions of its various compartments in humans.

Project 3. The Coding of Target Location in the Intra-Parietal Sulcus. The posterior parietal cortex plays a key role in the selection of targets for action and in the coding if their location. The initial coding of target location by the eye is in retinal coordinates. However a limb movement to the same target must be coded on egocentric coordinates. The posterior parietal cortex appears to be crucial for this transformation.

Recent Publications:

Wong, Y.J., Aldcroft, A.J., Large, M.-E., Culham, J.C., & Vilis, T. (2009). The Role of Temporal Synchrony as a Binding Cue for Visual Persistence in Early Visual Areas: An fMRI Study. Journal of Neurophysiology, 102, 3461-3468.

Large, M.-E., Culham, J.C., Kuchinad, A., Aldcroft, A., & Vilis, T. (2008). fMRI reveals greater within- than between-hemifield integration in the human lateral occipital cortex. European Journal of Neuroscience, 27, 3299-3309.

Fernandez-Ruiz, J., Goltz, H.C., Desouza, J.F., Vilis, T., & Crawford, J.D. (2007). Human Parietal "Reach Region" Primarily Encodes Intrinsic Visual Direction, Not Extrinsic Movement Direction, in a Visual-Motor Dissociation Task. Cerebral Cortex, 17(10), 2283-92.