News

October 2025

Congratulations to Eva Deligiannis for successfully defending her MSc thesis in Neuroscience: “Exploring neural responses in the human brain to real-world face size and distance”. Eva will be continuing in the lab as a Research Assistant and Lab Manager.

September 2025

Eva Deligiannis got her first paper for elegant fMRI work investigating the contribution of binocular disparity to face processing. The project was the first in the lab to develop real-world 3D viewing geometry in the scanner, thanks to the collaboration of many, including collaborator and 3D guru Laurie Wilcox.

Deligiannis, E, Donnelly, M. Coricelli, C., Babin, K., Stubbs, K., Ekstrand, C., Wilcox, L. M., & Culham, J. C. (2025). Binocular cues to 3D face structure increase activation in depth-selective visual cortex with negligible effects in face-selective areas. Journal of Vision, 25(11):6, 1-26.

August 2025

A new paper is out from a collaboration with Flo Martinez-Addiego, Yuqi Liu, and Ella Striem-Amit. Georgetown put out a press release, “Does Your Brain Respond to What You Are Doing or How You Do It?”

Martinez-Addiego, F., Liu, Y., Moon, K., Shytle, E., Amaral, L., O’Brien, C. Sen, S., Riesenhuber, M., Culham, J. C., & Striem-Amit, E. (2025). Action-type mapping principles extend beyond evolutionarily conserved actions, even in people born without hands. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 122(34) e2503188122.

July 2025

Congratulations to Sofia Varon, who will be heading to grad school at McGill University.

Thanks to visiting scholar Linda Rosbach from University of Regensburg for developing a technically challenging fMRI study.

Welcome to Emiko Muraki, who just began her postdoc on mental imagery and actions.

Welcome to Sanjivan Loganathan, a new MSc student in Psychology who just joined the lab after completing a BSc at University of Toronto.

March 2025

Lots of good news this month!…

Jody is honoured be the 2025 recipient of the Davida Teller Award from the Vision Sciences Society.

Congratulations to Dr. Michaela Kent for successfully defending her PhD thesis in Neuroscience, “From faces to minds: Exploring socio-cognitive development with fNIRS”. Michaela will be continuing as a postdoc in the lab as she writes up publications from her thesis.

Congratulations to MSc student Olivia Ipwanshek for recieving a Canada Graduate Scholarship — Master’s award!

Congratulations to Emiko Muraki for receiving an NSERC postdoctoral fellowship to work in the lab. Emiko will be joining the lab in July to study hand actions in individuals with aphantasia.

Welcome to Rieko Osu, a visiting scholar from Waseda University in Japan, who is spending part of her sabbatical (March-April) at Western

Welcome to Juan Chen, a visiting scholar from South China Normal University (and former postdoc with Mel Goodale and Jody Culham) who is spending her 2025 sabbatical at Queen’s University in Canada and visiting Western periodically during that time.

Welcome to Linda Rosbach, a visiting Master’s student from Regensburg University in Germany supervised by Angelika Lingnau. Linda will be working on a collaborative fMRI project comparing virtual to real hand actions.

February 2025

The lab congratulates postdoc Mozhgan Salimparsa on her new position as a data scientist at AmeriTrust Financial.

January 2025

Former honours student and current research assistant Sofia Varon got her first publication:

Varon, S., Babin, K., Spering, M., & Culham, J. C. (2025). Target interception in virtual reality is better for natural than for unnatural trajectories. Journal of Vision, 25(1):11, 1-20

September 2024

The lab welcomes new members! Olivia Ipwanshek and Ben Pilling are joining the lab as MSc students in Psychology. Shaylyn Kress, who received her PhD from the University of Saskatchewan will be starting a postdoc position at the University of Lethbridge, co-supervised on-site by Chelsea Ekstrand and remotely by Jody Culham.

July 2024

Two new papers:

Dima, D. C., Janarthanan, S., Culham, J. C., & Mohsenzadeh, Y. (2024). Shared representations of human actions across vision and language. Neuropsychologia, 108962.

Deng, Z., Gao, J., Li, A., Chen, Y., Gao, B., Culham, J. C., & Chen, J. (2024). Viewpoint adaptation revealed potential representational differences between 2D images and 3D objects. Cognition, 105903.

December 2023

Brain and Mind at Western, led by Ingrid Johnsrude (PI), received grants for $9M from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation and Ontario Research Fund for “Next-generation human cognitive neuroscience for real-world applications” . The lab is particularly excited about getting access to state-of equipment for Virtual and Augmented Reality Displays (VR/AR), high-density optical neuroimaging (HD-DOT), and wearable MEG (using optically pumped magnetometers).

Congratulations to Lina Klein [co-supervised CREATE-IRTG PhD student] and Guido Maiello on the publication of a new article:

Klein, L.K., Maiello, G., Stubbs, K. M., Proklova, D., Chen, J., Paulun, V. C., Culham, J. C., & Fleming, R. W. (2023). Distinct neural components of visually guided grasping during planning and execution. Journal of Neuroscience, 43(49), 8504-8514.

November 2023

Congratulations to Prof. Juan Chen and former MSc student Joey Paciocco on publication of a new article:

Chen, J., Paciocco, J. U., Deng, Z., & Culham, J. C. (2023). Human neuroimaging reveals differences in activation and connectivity between real and pantomimed tool use. Journal of Neuroscience, 43(46), 7853-7867.

September 2023

We were deeply saddened to learn about the passing of Margaret Maltz, originally Margarita "Rita" Maltseva, on May 29, 2023.

Rita was a Master's student (2013-15) and PhD student (2015-2020) in Psychology in Professor Jody Culham’s Lab at Western University until she went on medical leave in 2020.  She joined Western after immigrating to Canada from Russia and completing a Bachelor's honours degree at Trent University under the supervision of Professor Liana Brown.  Upon joining Western, she was an active participant in a CREATE-IRTG international training program between Canada and Germany.  During her participation in the CREATE program, she collaborated with Professor Gudrun Schwarzer's lab at Justis-Liebig University in Giessen Germany. 

Rita's research in the Culham Lab investigated how the size and distance of objects are perceived in the real world and how perception is influenced by our prior experience with the particular sizes of objects.  In a bold departure from the way perception is typically studied in laboratories, she moved away from studying images to study real, tangible objects.  This research required considerable creativity and outside-the-box thinking, for which Rita was ideally suited.  Memories of her in the lab include shopping sprees for miniature and oversized objects at local toy stores, lab testing rooms filled with sports balls of different sizes configured into the well-known Ebbinghaus illusion, and many months of tenacious troubleshooting to figure out how to present real objects at different distances in an MRI scanner without inducing artifacts.  Through her creative problem solving and grit, Rita completed novel research projects demonstrating robust but underappreciated effects of size and distance on perception and brain activation.

Rita will be remembered fondly for her vibrant personality, unbridled zest for life, quirky one-of-a-kind perspectives, and warm generosity of spirit. 

Her obituary can be found at:
https://memorials.demarcofuneralhomes.com/margaret-maltz/5201822/

July 2023

Congratulations to former lab postdoc, Guy Rens, on a new paper in Journal of Neuroscience based on his ambitious temporal coding analyses of data from Teresa Figley.

Rens, G., Figley, T. D., Gallivan, J. G., Liu, Y, & Culham, J. C. (2023). Grasping with a twist: Dissociating action goals from motor actions in human frontoparietal circuits. Journal of Neuroscience,43(32), 5831-5847.

Jody (along with her dog, Doris) arrived in St. John’s, Newfoundland, where she’ll be spending a sabbatical writing manuscripts and an fMRI textbook.

December 2022

We have a new publication from the lab:

Rzepka, A. M., Hussey, K. J., Maltz, M. V., Babin, K., Wilcox, L. M., & Culham, J. C. (2022). Familiar size affects perception differently in virtual reality and the real world. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 378, 20210464.

The article was featured by Western News: “Should you believe your eyes? Not necessarily in VR says new study”.

November 2022

Emily Davidson is presenting a poster at the Society for Neuroscience conference in San Diego: Human neuroimaging reveals that agency in a video game boosts functional connectivity within and between brain networks

October 2022

Congratulations to Jaana Leppala, Emily Davidson, and Cassandra Bacher, who successfully defended their Master’s theses in Neuroscience:

Jaana Leppala: Virtual hand actions show behavioural and neural signatures of right handedness

Emily Davidson: Human neuroimaging reveals that agency in a video game boosts functional connectivity within and between networks

Cassandra Bacher: The Effect of Active Learning on Viewpoint Dependence for Novel Objects

Western’s Optical Neuroimaging Research Group (ONRG, pronounced like “energy”) was featured in Western News. Sponsored by NIRx and BrainsCAN, ONRG hosted our first conference on functional near-infrared spectroscopy, WestNIRS, with two great keynote speakers, Joy Hirsch of Yale and Ted Huppert of the University of Pittsburgh.

May 2022

Jaana Leppala is presenting a poster at the Vision Sciences Society: Virtual hand actions show behavioral and neural signatures of right handedness. See the abstract in Journal of Vision.

October 2021

Congratulations to Homa Vahidi, Guy Rens and Kevin Stubbs for winning the Student Research Excellence Award at the Society for Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy conference for Homa’s poster on our lab’s first fNIRS project!:

Vahidi, H., Rens, G. Stubbs, K., Quinlan, D. Sorger, B, & Culham, J. C. (2021). Using functional near-infrared spectroscopy for the study of naturalistic hand actions. Society for Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy, Online.

We resumed our annual tradition of a lab pumpkin carving night after a hiatus in 2020 due to the pandemic.

Jody gave a talk at Bar Ilan University’s Vision Science Seminar, “Immersive Neuroscience: Bringing cognitive neuroscience closer to the real world”. It is available online.

September 2021

Margaret Maltz has a new paper just published

Maltz, M. V., Stubbs, K. M., Quinlan, D. J., Rzepka, A. M., Martin, J. R., & Culham, J. C. (2021). Familiar size affects the perceived size and distance of real objects even with binocular vision. Journal of Vision, 21(10):21, 1–18.

June 2021

Jody Culham’s appointment as a Canada Research Chair in Immersive Neuroscience has been officially announced. Read all about it on this press release.

May 2021

Check out the Culham Lab’s posters at the Virtual Vision Sciences Society meeting!

Rzepka, A. M., Maltz, M. V., Stubbs, K. M., Babin, K., Quinlan, D. J.  & Culham, J. C. (May 2021). Differences in size and distance perception between virtual reality and the real world. Virtual Vision Sciences Society (online).

Hussey, K (Advisors: Culham, J. C., & Wilcox, L. M.) (May 2021). Familiar size reliably affects size and distance perception in high-resolution virtual reality. Virtual Vision Sciences Society Undergraduate “Just In Time” Poster Session (online).

Vahidi, H (Advisors: Rens: G, Sorger, B., & Culham, J.C.) (May 2021). Using functional near-infrared spectroscopy for the study of visually guided hand actions. Virtual Vision Sciences Society Undergraduate “Just In Time” Poster Session (online).

New paper:

Sensoy, Ö, Culham, J. C., & Schwarzer, G. (2021). The advantage of real objects over matched pictures in infants' processing of the familiar size of objects. Infant and Child Development, e2234.

March 2021

Our TICS review is online! TICS has made it available for free for 50 days:

Snow, J. C. & Culham, J. C. (2021). The treachery of images: How realism influences brain and behavior. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 25(6), 506-519.

January 2021

The CulhamARI lab got an internal grant, Western Strategic Success for CIHR, “Using Optical Neuroimaging to Decode Hand Actions” to support collection of pilot data for optical neuroimaging (functional near-infrared spectroscopy) of grasping actions.

New and forthcoming papers:

Sivakumar, P., Quinlan, D. J., Stubbs, K. M., & Culham, J. C. (2021). Grasping performance depends upon the richness of hand feedback. Experimental Brain Research, 239(3), 835-846.

Cardinali, L., Zanini, A., Yanofsky, R., Roy, A. C., de Vignemont, F., Culham*, J, & Farne*, A. (2021). The toolish hand illusion: Embodiment of a tool based on similarity with the hand. Scientific Reports, 11, 2024.

Gerhard, T. M., Culham, J. C., & Schwarzer G. (2020). Manual exploration of objects is related to 7-month-old infants’ visual preference for real objects. Infant Behavior and Development.

Witt, J. K., Kemmerer, D., Linkenauger, S. A., & Culham, J. C. (2020). Reanalysis suggests evidence for motor simulation in naming tools is limited: A commentary on Witt, Kemmerer, Linkenauger, and Culham (2010). Psychological Science, 31(8), 1036-1039.