Mini-symposium on Perception and Memory

Description

MINI-SYMPOSIUM ON PERCEPTION AND MEMORY

9.00 – 9.30 Breakfast

9.30 – 10.00 Tour of the experimental laboratory

10.00 – 10.45 Synaesthesia – some thoughts and questions by associate professor Thomas Alrik Sørensen, Aalborg University

Synaesthesia is a perceptual phenomenon where people seem to have atypical experiential sensory properties in one or more perceptual categories (e.g. that letter shapes induce a perceptual colour quality). The prevalence of synaesthesia have varied from the early studies and until today where there is a consensus that this is a fairly common condition affecting approximately 1 in 23 og healthy people. Various explanations on the phenomenon (e.g. genetics) have been proposen, but synaesthesia may in fact just be an instance of the perceptual variations that exists between observers. I this talk I will try and argue for some of the perceptual phenomena that suggest that perceptual strategies may vary to a high degree between individuals and finally I will also try and emphasise some of the large questions that still challenge our understanding of synaesthesia.

10.45 – 11.00 Project presentation – Synaesthesia and multisensory perception by ph.d.-student Aurore Zelazny, Aalborg University

11.00 – 11.15 Project presentation – Short-term memory and expertise by ph.d.-student Jonas Olsen Dall, Aalborg University

11.15 – 12.00 Multisensory perception by professor Berit Brogaard, University of Miami

12.00 – 12.45 Lunch

12.45 – 13.30 Measuring priority in visual attention and working memory with EEG by associate professor Tobias Feldmann-Wustefeld, University of Southampton

Our visual system is confronted with more stimuli it can process at any given moment. Attention allows the selection of a subset of the incoming information to optimally use the limited resources. Working memory allows the maintenance of selected stimuli over short periods of time. Which factors determine the visual priority in attention and working memory? I addressed this question with electroencephalography (EEG) because this methods provides precise neural markers of attention deployment and working memory maintenance. In this talk I will present evidence of how various factors such as physical salience, current goals, emotional content, reward or associative learning affect the visual priority in attention and WM.

13.30 – 17.00 Coffee and discussions

Period	20 Jun 2019
Event type	Seminar
Location	Aalborg Øst, DenmarkShow on map
Degree of Recognition	Local