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of backward stimuli

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of forward stimuli

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of random stimuli

Our fMRI research has focused on two related themes:

Looming Detection and Time to Collision Judgments

Detecting a looming object and its approximate time to collision (TTC) is imperative to survival and for most humans it is a fundamental aspect of daily activities such as driving, road crossing, and participating in sport. Whilst there have been many  of behavioural studies in this area, neural aspects of looming detection and TTC computation have been confined largely to insect and avian species.

We have recently been working on replicating some of these studies in humans; focusing on human homologues  of sub-cortical structures implicated in non-human research as well as somatosensory cortical regions highlighted in previous motor preparatory tasks. Our forthcoming paper in Proceedings of the Royal Society B outlines how subcortical regions such as the superior colliculus and the medial pulvinar nucleus of the thalamus may act as part of an early collision warning system in addition to a both an extensive motor preparatory system and a computation system involving the anterior insula.

Visual Guidance of Locomotion

Navigating through the environment typically involves anticipating impending changes in heading trajectory in addition to maintaining the current direction of travel. We have been exploring the neural systems involved in detecting future path information and maintaining current lane positioning using simulated ground plane plus road stimulus. During simulated forwards travel, in which far road features act to improve behavioural performance on a heading task, we have found increased activation in a region of the superior parietal lobe and the medial intraparietal sulcus (mIPS). Providing no far road information during a forwards heading judgment task resulted in activation in the motion complex (MT+) only. This research has lead us to propose a complementary role for the posterior parietal cortex and MT+ in detecting future path information and maintaining current lane positioning respectively.