ERP-FRP People and Projects
ERP-FRP Executive Committee
Laboratory Assistants
Researchers
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Dr Blake JohnsonBlake is doing a spectral analysis on the ERP data collected for Greg Savage's study on the SToRE (see below). Blake combines techniques from cognitive and perceptual psychology with neuroscientific techniques. He is particularly interested in techniques that have very high temporal resolution for brain activity, including electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetoencephalography (MEG). |
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Christopher SewellWe examined the relationship between social anxiety and the neural processing of threat in faces. We tested 21 adults with different levels of society anxiety for their ERPs to unattended threatening and non-threatening faces, presented upright and upside-down, at three points in time: 160-210 ms (VPP), 300-350 ms (N3), and 440-500 ms (P3). Social anxiety was significantly correlated with the size of P3 to upright angry faces but not happy faces. Thus threat-related shifts in attention start to affect processing of faces at 440-500 ms. |
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Dr Florian Hutzler and Stefan HowelkaIn July 2008, Florian and Stefan traveled from the University of Salzburg (Austria) to MACCS (Australia) to integrate an eye-tracking system with our existing ERP lab so that we can measure fixation-related potentials (FRPs). FRPs allow us to measure ERPs to stimuli presented in real-world contexts. There are only 5 active FRP labs in the world. This Austrian-Australia axis are collaborating on 3 experiments: one comparing FRPs to words in Austrian and Australian readers, and two comparing FRPs to eyes and mouths in faces. |
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Dr Genevieve McArthurWe tested 6- to 12-year-old children with SLI (N = 19), children with SRD (N = 55), and controls (N = 36) for their passive auditory ERPs to tones, rapid tones, vowels, and consonant-vowels. Thirty-eight percent of children with SLI or SRD had atypical passive auditory ERPs in the N1-P2 window across all the sounds. These children had atypically ⤽flat⤝ ERPs in the N1-P2 region, as well as poor nonword reading and poor nonword repetition. These findings support the idea that impaired auditory processing is a cause of SLI and SRD. |
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Associate Professor Greg SavageVerbal memory difficulties due to left hemisphere lesions are reliably measured using word-based tests; nonverbal memory problems due to right hemisphere lesions are measured with pictures, but less reliably. We tested hemispheric biases using ERPs to (1) written nonwords, spoken nonwords, and the two paired; and (2) dot patterns, novel melodies, and the two paired. Temporal analyses revealed a larger N1 to written nonwords on the left and dot patterns on the right. Spectral analyses will be used to measure later neural processing. |
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Professor HedwigAfter a miraculous recovery from a Death Eater blast, Professor Hedwig has joined the MACCS ERP-FRP lab to help explain to children how ERPs work so that they will not be frightened of the sensors that we put on their heads. Professor Hedwig has helped us test 100's of children, making her the most experienced ERP researcher in the lab. She has also been photographed with more fans (in their ERP caps) than Paris Hilton. She is currently pursuing a collaboration with Kermit-the-Frog in the Language Acquisition Lab. |
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Linda LarsenI compared the performance of monolinguals and bilinguals on the Attentional Network Task. I found that that bilinguals were better at resolving response conflict than monolinguals, and exhibited a smaller P300 in the left hemisphere at P3 and CP3. In contrast, I found that bilinguals and monolinguals showed comparable spatial attention as indexed by N1 and P1, and comparable temporal attention as indexed by a sustained negative deflection (CNV) over frontal sites. |
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Megan WillisThis study examined the process of switching associations between facial identity (e.g., person 1 and person 2) and different emotional expressions (i.e., happy and angry). ERPs and behavioural measures were measured while subjects monitored facial expressions of identity pairs. Behavioural responses were more impaired when they had to switch their behavioural responses to angry than to happy expressions. Switching associations between facial identity and emotional expression also modulated the N2, P3a and P3b ERP components. |
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Mridula Sharma and Krystal LoBehavioural studies have shown that adding a visual cue to an auditory cue makes the latter appear louder. However, behavioural data are affected by task-related factors such as attention. ERPs can be measured without task-related factors. We aim is to use ERPs to examine the auditory-visual advantage in 12 adults while they perceive visual and auditory interaction of congruent stimuli (the subject sees a person voicing /ba/ and hears /ba/) and incongruent stimuli (the subject hears /ba/ but the person voices /ga/). |
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Peter De LissaMy ERP study tested facial expression processing in adults and children. As part of a broader study conducted by Romina Palermo at the MACCS ERP lab, I used ERPs to measure cortical activity in two different age groups, using participant sex as a variable of interest. No sex-effect was found to be significant in either age group. However, different emotional expressions elicited quantitatively and qualitatively different cortical activations in the temporo-parietal regions (generally regarded as reflecting activation of the fusiform face area) as well as in more frontal areas at a later latency. |
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Dr Romina PalermoA complex network of brain regions are involved in perceiving and recognising facial expressions. Some brain pathways and structures appear to process faces relative automatically while others seem to be involved in conscious recognition of expressions. It is likely that the brain regions involved in automatic face processing mature earlier than those involved in conscious processes. This research aims to chart the development of automatic and conscious processing of facial expressions to see if these process develop differently with age. |
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Sophie KercherI measured ERPs to happy faces (judged to be attractive), sad faces (judged to be unattractive), and neutral faces. Unattractive sad faces and neutral faces triggered larger P1 and P300 ERPs than attractive happy faces, indicating a processing bias towards unattractive faces. Happy attractive and sad unattractive faces triggered a larger N170 ERP than neutral faces. This suggested that the processing of attractiveness was enhanced by happy and sad expressions. |
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Varghese PeterProsody in speech and music is cued mainly by changes in duration. The study investigated the relationship between neural processing of sound duration in speech and music. Mismatch negativity (MMN) was recorded for duration changes in tones and abstract duration changes in speech and music. The results indicated a relationship between abstract MMN for music and MMN for duration deviance in tones. However, there was no relationship between abstract MMN for speech and abstract MMN for music. |
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Yatin MahajanThere is considerable controversy about how sound and visual processing matures in the brain. Research has revealed that adolescence is a period of great neural change. The current research is aimed towards studying the neurophysiological changes associated with auditory and visual processing during adolescence. Using ERPs development changes to speech and non speech sounds and visual images will be tracked from 10-18 years. |