Research - Dr. Benoit-Antoine Bacon
Dr. Benoit-Antoine Bacon
Department of Psychology
- The 3D world projects itself unto two flat retinal images and the brain basically recovers the fullness of the 3D world by computing the minute spatial disparities (differences) between the two retinal images. We aim to understand (a) how neurons in the various regions of the brain encode and process spatial disparities and (b) how are the responses of the various neurons combined to reconstruct the 3D visual scene.
- Visual illusions are interesting because they highlight the heuristics that the brain uses to resolve the visual scene. We have become interested in the neurophysiological correlates of classic heuristics (light comes from above), phenomena (amodal completion, form defined by motion) and illusions (illusory contours, the McGurk effect).
- Recently, we have become interested in how the visual system encodes visual information in two distinct streams: consciously and unconsciously. Using a repetition-priming paradigm, we have demonstrated that when we look at given visual stimulus (e.g. a human face), some aspects of the stimulus are encoded consciously (mostly the central, high spatial frequency components) while some aspects are encoded unconsciously (mostly the peripheral, low spatial frequency components). We are now hoping to determine how these conscious and unconscious components are processed at the neural level.
- It has long been acknowledged that the visually challenged show compensation in other sensory modalities, most notably audition. We have become interested in the substrates of the compensatory processes
- In collaboration with Dr. Michel Dugas from Concordia University, we have started to investigate visual biases in anxious individuals. In particular, we are interested in how these individuals encode the various facial expressions.
