Teaching

Advanced undergraduate course:

PSYC329 Cognitive and Clinical Neuropsychology of Vision (University of Liverpool)

Overall Aims and Purpose

Imagine that you are sitting in a room observing the scene around you. You see a cup, and a guitar, and you instantly recognise them. If you want to, you can reach out across space and pick them up. In fact, this is something that most of us can do effortlessly. But how do we do it? How does our visual system work? How can we perceive, recognise and interact with objects so easily? How do we know where particular objects are in space, and how to reach them? And what happens to our visual system when we are no longer able to recognise objects as is the case of some individuals following an injury to the brain? Why does the visual agnosic IES think that the guitar is a tennis racket, and that the cup is a bucket? And why does AH, an otherwise neurologically normal individual, systematically reach in the mirror-opposite direction when asked to indicate the location of an object that is placed in front of her? What do these disorders tell us about object and spatial vision in the normal and dysfunctional brain? This module provides an advanced introduction to theoretical and empirical developments in studies of object and spatial processing in human vision from the perspectives of current research in clinical and cognitive neuroscience. We focus our investigation on object perception, recognition and spatial processing – some of the most important and fundamental functions of human vision, and critically examine current evidence from studies of the neurologically normal brain in experimental psychology and cognitive neuroscience (e.g., fMRI, PET, TMS and ERP), and from clinical studies of cognitive impairments following brain injury (visual agnosia, prosopagnosia, Parkinson’s disease and developmental deficits).

The course is particularly relevant for students interested in clinical and cognitive aspects of human vision, and those wishing to develop a broader understanding of current research methodologies in clinical and cognitive neuroscience in preparation for clinical training or a research career (e.g., PhD).