Dr Bianca De Haan
Associate Dean (Student Experience) / Senior Lecturer

Using a combination of fMRI, TMS, EEG, lesion-symptom mapping and psychophysical methods in neurologically healthy subjects and neuropsychological patients, we focus on the following questions:

What cognitive processes and neural anatomy underlie failures of multi-target attention in extinction patients?Extinction is a common consequence of unilateral brain damage where patients are able to detect both ipsi- and contralesional information presented in isolation, but are unable to attend and respond to contralesional information in situations where ipsilesional information is concurrently present. That is, these patients show a selective inability to attend and respond in multi-target environments, whereas their ability to attend and respond in single-target environments is intact. Therefore, studying these patients could provide unique insights concerning the cognitive processes and neural anatomy critical for the ability to attend and respond in multi-target environments. Currently, however, the precise cognitive processes and neural anatomy that underlie extinction remain poorly understood.

In everyday life, we are typically confronted with dynamic multi-target scenes that require us to attend simultaneously to multiple non-contiguous spatial locations. Traffic scenes are a quintessential example of such dynamic multi-target environments. In the UK alone, around 2000 people die each year in traffic-related accidents (WHO, 2019). To reduce accidents in these dynamic multi-target environments, understanding how healthy subjects navigate these environments, and which factors modulate this ability, is essential.