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Dear all,
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<div class="">this is a reminder for tomorrow vision group to be held in <b class="">A30 </b>at <b class="">4pm.</b></div>
<div class="">Derek Arnold will be giving a talk (see abstract below), whereas next week slot is temporarily free (if interested, just let me know).</div>
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<div class="">Title: From studies of consciousness to a treatment for blindness?</div>
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<div class="">Abstract:</div>
<div class=""><b class="">In this talk, I will discuss a line of research sparked by an undergraduate who asked a simple question - why do images get suppressed from awareness during binocular rivalry? This sparked investigations resulting in my considered
response to this question (because binocular suppression is useful for facilitating the visibility of distant fixated objects over selective obstructions of one eye). This, in turn, led me to adopt methodologies that can reliably suppress information from
awareness for protracted periods, which I have used to show people can be taught to both fear (classical conditioning) and to better manually interact with inputs they feel they cannot see. This, in turn, led me to investigate whether the extent of subjective blindness
associated with the physiological blindspot could be reduced by training - surprisingly it can. This speaks to a controversial literature, regarding the plausibility of using perceptual learning to improve visual functioning in cases of acquired localised blindness,
such as that resulting from age-related macular degeneration or cortical scotoma. In sum, you never know where a question after a second year lecture might lead.</b></div>
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<div class="">Bio: A/Prof Derek Arnold was awarded his PhD from Macquarie University in 2002, and in that year took up an Anglo-Australian postdoctoral Fellowship funded by The Royal Society at UCL. In 2006 he accepted a faculty position at The University of
Queensland, initially as an ARC funded Australian Postdoctoral Fellow, then as an Australian Research Fellow, and since 2014 as a Future Fellow. His research is primarily concerned with links between neural processing and conscious perceptual experience, with
specific interests in time perception, cross modal perception, and perceptual rivalry.</div>
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<div class="">See you all tomorrow.</div>
<div class="">Best,</div>
<div class="">Elisa</div>
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<div class=""><i class="">What everyone believed yesterday, and you believe today, only cranks will believe tomorrow. Francis Crick</i><br class="">
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