Mechanisms of normal and amblyopic spatial vision and appearance in Amblyopia
Dennis Levi, Professor
Optometry
Closed. This professor is continuing with Fall 2024 apprentices on this project; no new apprentices needed for Spring 2025.
Research in my lab focuses on how we perceive visual forms and patterns, and how form and depth perception are degraded by abnormal visual experience early in life (amblyopia). Specifically, we use psychophysics, eye-movements, computational modelling and brain imaging (fMRI) to study the neural mechanisms of normal pattern vision in humans, and to learn how they are degraded by abnormal visual experience (amblyopia), and how they recover.
One study specifically investigates how stimuli appear to persons with amblyopia. Previous research has found that persons with amblyopia perceive isolated stimuli as more distorted and had stronger crowding (i.e., worse performance with flanked stimuli) than normal observers in the fovea. The current project aims to investigate appearance and crowding in amblyopia in an effort to characterize and shed light on the underlying mechanisms of amblyopia.
This project is an international collaboration with Dr. Bilge Sayim (University of Lille, France) and Dr. Wolf Harmening (Bonn University, Germany).
Qualifications: There is room in the lab for up to three students with an interest in vision, good computer skills, and excellent eyesight (with correction). Students in the lab serve as both experiments and observers. Students will learn basic psychophysical and brain imaging techniques, and will contribute to all aspects of the experiments (data collection, analysis, etc).
Students will learn about both standard performance-based tasks in psychophysics and appearance-based methods. Students will have the opportunity to interact with patients and controls (as well as participating as a research participant). Students will contribute to data collection and, if interested, programming as well as data analysis. Programming skills in Python and Matlab, as well as experience with image analysis are a good addition. Motivation and responsibility are necessary. Flexibility with hours is a plus.
Students will be expected to devote at least 10 hours per week (distributed to meet the needs of the project and the students commitments) to the project.
Day-to-day supervisor for this project: Jian Ding and Angela Gomez Tomaz
Hours: 9-11 hrs
Related website: https://www.levilabberkeley.org/
Biological & Health Sciences