2020 round-up

The past year has been ... unconventional. So unconventional that we hadn't updated our page in a full year! (oops)

In January, Dr Li Zhen (aka RealLi) joined us as a post-doc! He didn't know it, but we already came up with his nickname before his arrival. Realli comes to us from Japan where he completed a 3D vision PhD.

In May, we attended 'virtual VSS', presenting some of our MRI audio-visual work [Chang, D. H. F., Thinnes, D., Au, P. Y., Maziero, D., Stenger, V. A., Sinnett, S., & Vibell, J. (2020). Bounce or stream? Motion dynamics modulate the audiovisual bounce inducing effect. VSS2020.], and binocular (dichoptic) visual learning work [Kam, K. Y., Chan, A., & Chang, D. H. F. (2020). Generality of learning as driven by dichoptic visual training. VSS2020.]

In June, JJ's work came out in NeuroImage -- on an interesting role of a gaze-relevant tract that interfaces with the brainstem for affective perception. [Wong, J. J., Chang, D. H. F., Di, Q., Men, W., Gao, J. H., & Lee, T. M. C. (2020). The pontine-driven somatic gaze tract contributes to affective processing in humans. NeuroImage, 213: 116692, 1-11]

Also in June, the RGC announced their funding results from the last cycle -- Dorita's GRF on Promoting Binocular Visual Plasticity was funded (yay).

In September, we welcomed two new graduate students to the lab. Michelle Zhao is working on an aging vision project, and Justin Or is working on a TMS/perceptual learning project, both about binocular vision! (stay tuned, we don't want to give away too much! :P)

From Oct - December, two of Dorita's papers went in press:

Our work with F Architecture on viewing green-spaces and brain health (the tldr is the posterior cingulate), [Chang, D. H. F., Jiang, B., Wong, N. H. L., Wong, J. J., Webster, C., & Lee, T. M. C. (in press). The human posterior cingulate and the stress-response benefits of viewing green urban landscapes. NeuroImage. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.117555 .]

and,

Our work with CINET on MRI/MEG fusion of biological motion responses in the human (no tldr -- because it is t...l...) [Chang, D. H. F., Troje, N. F., Ikegaya, Y., Fujita, I., & Ban, H. (in press). Spatiotemporal dynamics of responses to biological motion in the human brain. Cortex. ]

As 2020 comes to a close, the lab wishes everyone continued sanity.