Marlene Behrmann, PhD

Behrmann’s research is concerned with characterizing the computations of the human cortical visual system 

Despite the fact that visual scenes may contain multiple objects and people, humans can recognize the objects and individuals with ease and accuracy. Research in my lab focuses on studying how this is achieved - what are the necessary psychological processes and representations that underlie abilities such as object segmentation and recognition, face recognition, mental imagery, reading and writing and spatial attention? The major approach used to address these questions is to study the behavior of human adults and children in health and in disease, with the latter including individuals whose brains have been altered by stroke, head injury or surgical resection, which selectively affects their ability to carry out these visual processes. By examining brain-behavior correspondences using neuroimaging (EEG, fMRI, sEEG) and detailed psychophysics measures, we can shed light on the functional and structural organization of the brain and come to understand the biological substrate of high-level vision.