Welcome

The CulhamARI Lab is affiliated with the Brain and Mind Institute and Department of Psychology at Western University in London, Ontario, Canada. We are also active in Western's Undergraduate and Graduate Programs in Neuroscience.

For additional updates, please check us out on Twitter: @CulhamARI_Lab

News

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.

September 2020

The CulhamARI Lab welcomes a new doctoral student, Michaela Kent (co-supervised with Emma Duerden) and three new Master’s students in Neuroscience, Jaana Leppala, Cassandra Bacher (co-supervised with Marieke Mur and Mel Goodale), & Emily Davidson (co-supervised with Mike Anderson).

Congratulations to Simona Monaco (former PhD student and postdoctoral fellow) on her appointment as an Assistant Professor at the University of Trento.

June 2020

We received a New Frontiers in Research Fund Exploration grant: “Naturalistic Cognitive Neuroscience Through Immersive Virtual Games” (Jody Culham [PI]; Joern Diedrichsen [co-PI]; Adrian Owen; Mike Katchebaw; Ingrid Johnsrude [collaborator].

Check out our two presentations at the Virtual Vision Sciences Society (V-VSS) online meeting.

Maltz, M. V., Stubbs, K. M., Quinlan, D. J., Rzepka, A., Martin, J. & Culham, J. C. (June 2020). Familiar size affects size and distance perception for real objects, even in the presence of oculomotor cues, Virtual Vision Sciences Society (online).

Coricelli, C., Stubbs, K. M., Rumiati, R. I., Culham, J. C. (June 2020). Decoding representations of food images within the ventral visual stream. Virtual Vision Sciences Society (online).

Congratulations to recent postdoctoral fellow, Chelsea Ekstrand, for her new position as Assistant Professor at the Canadian Centre for Behavioral Neuroscience at the University of Lethbridge!

Congratulations to Simona Monaco on the publication of a new paper:

Monaco, S., Malfatti, G., Culham, J. C., Cattaneo, L, & Turella, L. (2020). Decoding motor imagery and action planning in the early visual cortex: overlapping but distinct neural mechanisms. NeuroImage, 116981.

April 2020

Congratulations to

• Homa Vahidi, who will be a NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Award holder over the summer

• Kieran Hussey, who will be a University Student Research Internship holder over the summer

• Kevin Stubbs, who has been appointed as an fNIRS Programmer Analyst with BrainsCAN. Kevin will still be working a few hours per week for the Culham Lab.

• Ethan Poris, lab research assistant, who was accepted to Western’s Ivey Business School for a Master’s program.

• Shreya Gandhi, undergraduate volunteer, who was elected as Co-President for the Western Undergraduate Neuroscience Society for the 2020-2021 Academic Year

• Postdoctoral fellow, Guy Rens, who has a paper in the Journal of Neuroscience published from his PhD.

The Culham Lab has been adapting to the COVID-19 pandemic. We’re having lab meetings on Zoom with more pets attending than usual.

March 2020

New paper in press:

Sensoy, O, Culham, J. C., & Schwarzer, G. (In press). Do infants show knowledge of the familiar size of everyday objects? Journal of Experimental Child Psychology.

February 2020

Jody was asked by the Globe and Mail to comment on a new transit safety procedure and was interviewed by Global News Radio 640 Toronto.

The lab welcomes Dr. Guy Rens as a postdoctoral fellow. Guy received his PhD from KU Leuven in Belgium (advisor: Marco Davare). He will be using functional near-infrared spectroscopy and transcranial magnetic stimulation to study sensorimotor systems.

November 2019

At the lab holiday party, we made a miniature lab out of gingerbread, including an MRI scanner!

September 2019

The lab welcomes Karsten Babin as a Virtual Reality Programmer, funded by a BrainsCAN Accelerator Stimulus grant to develop VR displays for fMRI and behavioral studies.

Western University has been named as the fifth “fastest rising Institutions by country for scientific research” (#1 in Canada) by Nature’s natureindex.com, with a special shout out to the Brain and Mind Institute.

August 2019

The lab welcomes Chelsea Ekstrand as a new BrainsCAN-funded postdoctoral fellow working with Jody Culham and Ingrid Johnsrude. Chelsea received her PhD from the University of Saskatchewan (advisor: Ron Borowsky). She will be studying human brain responses to virtual stimuli and virtual games.

We celebrated/mourned the end of the summer with a lab trip to the Pinery Provincial Park.

July 2019

Through BrainsCAN funding, the CulhamARI lab is leading development of a virtual gaming environment for fMRI.The team includes Jody Culham, Ingrid Johnsrude, Joern Diedrichsen, Julio Martinez-Trujillo, Mike Katchabaw, Adrian Owen, and incoming postdoc Chelsea Ekstrand.

June 2019

Congratulations to the newly anointed Doctor Laura Cabral, who successfully defended her PhD thesis in Psychology (co-supervised by Rhodri Cusack): “The Origins and Development of Visual Categorization.”

May 2019

After years of studying size perception, doctoral candidate Rita Maltseva discovered how to outgrow her advisor at the Vision Sciences Society conference.

March 2019

Western has launched OurBrainsCAN, a registry of potential research participants for cognitive neuroscience studies in the London, Ontario area. To sign up, go to the OurBrainsCAN web site.

January 2019

Jason Gallivan has a new paper:

Gallivan, J. P., Chapman, C. S., Gale, D. J., Flanagan, J. R. & Culham, J. C. (In press). Selective modulation of early visual cortical activity by movement intention. Cerebral Cortex.

November 2018

Erez Freud has a new paper:

Freud, E., Culham, J. C., Namdar, G., & Behrmann, M. (2019). Object complexity modulates the association between action and perception in childhood. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 179, 56-72.

October 2018

The lab welcomes two doctoral students visiting for a research exchange for the CREATE-IRTG “Brain in Action” training program: Marieke Pazen, a PhD student from Benjamin Straube’s lab at Philipps University, Marburg, Germany, and Lina Klein, a PhD student from Roland Fleming’s lab at Justus-Liebig University, Giessen, Germany. We also welcome the return of Carol Coricelli, a postdoc from SISSA, Trieste, Italy.

Our work on the patient with Riddoch phenomenon was featured on the Scientific American podcast (Time: 10:56-23:40)

September 2018

Scientific American and The Ophthalmologist profiled our work on a patient with Riddoch syndrome.

The lab welcomes Özlem Sensoy, a doctoral student from Gudrun Schwarzer’s lab at Justus-Liebig University, Giessen, Germany, who is visiting for a research exchange for the CREATE-IRTG “Brain in Action” training program.

August 2018

The Culham Lab (and friends) celebrated Jody's 50th Birthday. Heartfelt thanks to Jody's mom Lil, administrative assistant Rosanna, and friends Rita & Tutis for organizing the surprise.

The lab welcomes Guy Rens, doctoral student from Marco Davare's lab at KU Leuven, Belgium, who is visiting for a month to begin an fMRI project on action observation.

July 2018

The lab congratulates Chelsea Ekstrand, for receiving a prestigious BrainsCAN postdoctoral fellowship to work with Jody Culham and Ingrid Johnsrude. Chelsea is currently a doctoral student at the University of Saskatchewan and expects to begin a postdoc in the summer of 2019.

The lab congratulates previous trainees who have recently landed academic jobs. Dr. Erez Freud, who trained as a postdoc with Jody and Marlene Behrmann at Carnegie Mellon University, has recently become a tenure-track Assistant Professor at York University in Toronto. Dr. Juan Chen, who trained as a postdoc with Jody and Mel Goodale at Western, will join the faculty at South China Normal University in Guangzhou China.

Mike Vesia had a paper accepted for publication.

Vesia, M., Culham, J. C., Jegatheeswaran, G., Isayama, R., Le, A., Davare, M., & Chen, R. Functional interaction between human dorsal premotor cortex and ipsilateral primary motor cortex for grasp plans: a dual-site TMS study. NeuroReport.

June 2018

Western News did a feature on our patient with the Riddoch phenomenon and produced a video. The work has been featured on the National Post, Global News, Vancouver Sun, Daily Mail (U.K.), The Times (U.K.), Newsweek, Science Daily, The London Free Press, CTV News, CBC Afternoon Drive, Royal National Institute of Blind People (U.K.), Medical News Today, Men's Health (Australia), Fox News, Global News Radio 980 CFPL (London, Ontario) and dozens of other international sources.

May 2018

Our paper on a very interesting patient with Riddoch phenomenon is now in press.

Arcaro, M. J., Thaler, L., Quinlan, D. J., Monaco, S., Khan, S., Valyear, K. F., Goebel, R., Dutton, G. N., Goodale, M. A., Kastner, S., & Culham, J. C. (In press). Psychophysical and neuroimaging responses to moving stimuli in a patient with the Riddoch phenomenon due to bilateral visual cortex lesions. Neuropsychologia.

April 2018

Jody led a successful NSERC Research Tools and Instruments grant for Equipment for Neuroimaging of Virtual Stimuli and Virtual Interactions. This grant will fund new fMRI equipment for Western, including co-applicants Roy Eagleson, Mel Goodale, Ingrid Johnsrude, Stefan Köhler, Julio Martinez-Trujillo, Ravi Menon, Derek Mitchell, Adrian Owen, and Terry Peters. The new equipment includes a state-of-the art 3D ProPixx projector for fMRI, a short-range binocular eye tracker that will work with hand-action paradigms, and a high-resolution camera for recording hand movements in the scanner. This grant will enable new fMRI research on virtual environments, objects and actions.

March 2018

The journal Brain has published a study led by Tamar Makin and Fiona van den Heiligenberg, with help from former lab PhD student Scott Macdonald. The study examined hand-related areas in amputees, people born with only one hand, and two-handed control participants. In one-handers, activation in a visual region that responds to images of hands was activated when they viewed images of prostheses. Moreover, the visual activation level was correlated with how often they used the prosthesis, as was the strength of connections between visual and sensorimotor hand regions.

van den Heiligenberg, F. M. Z., Orlov, T., Macdonald, S. N., Duff, E. P., Henderson Slater, D., Beckmann, C., Johansen-Berg, H., Culham, J. C., & Makin, T. R. (2018 advance publication). Artificial limb representation in amputees. Brain.

Also, @CulhamARI_Lab is now on Twitter.

February 2018

Western's CFREF BrainsCAN team has announced upcoming competition for the BrainsCAN Postdoctoral Fellowship Program (deadline May 1, 2018).  The Brain and Mind Institute has announced the next competition for the  International Graduate Student Scholarships in Cognitive Neuroscience (deadline: Feb. 28). Trainees with stellar track records should consider applying.  

An image from Erez Freud's eLife paper was selected as the biomedical picture of the day.

January 2018

Congratulations to Carol Coricelli at SISSA, who had visited our lab in 2017, on successfully defending her PhD with distinction (cum laude).

We have moved into the Western Interdisciplinary Research Building. Jody's office is Room 4118. You can enter the building from the glass atrium (on the right as you face the building) and take the elevators.

December 2017

Congratulations to our colleagues at Philipps University Marburg and Justis-Liebig University Giessen on the 4.5-million-euro renewal of their "Brain in Action" International Research Training Grant from the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG).  The renewed funds, along with a Collaborative Research and Training Experience (CREATE) grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and support from Western, York and Queen's will enable an additional 4.5 years of CREATE and IRTG collaborative training exchanges between the German and Canadian universities. 

October 2017

New papers:

• Freud, E., Culham, J. C., Plaut, D. C., & Behrmann, M. (2017). The large-scale organization of shape processing in the ventral and dorsal pathways. eLife, 6:e27576.

• Monaco, S., Gallivan, J. P., Figley, T. D., Singhal, A., & Culham, J. C. (2017). Recruitment of foveal retinotopic cortex during haptic exploration of shapes and actions in the dark. Journal of Neuroscience, 37 (48) 11572-11591.

September 2017

Jody contributed to a feature on eLife's approach to peer review.

July 2017

Congratulations to Dr. Scott Macdonald on the successful defence of his PhD thesis, Characterizing Tool-Selective Areas with Human Neuroimaging

May 2017

New paper forthcoming

• Cavina-Pratesi, C., Connolly, J. D., Monaco, S., Figley, T. D., Milner, A. D., Schenk, T., & Culham, J. C. (2017) Human neuroimaging reveals the subcomponents of reaching and pointing actions. Cortex

Congratulations to Stephanie Schumacher, who was awarded the W. J. McCelland Award for the best Honours Thesis in Psychology at Western and a Canadian Psychological Association (CPA) "Certificate of Academic Excellence" for her honours thesis!

April 2017

Research from Tamar Makin's lab at UCL/Oxford, in collaboration with Scott Macdonald and Jody Culham (Hahamy et al., 2017, Current Biology), has been featured in the media, including The Independent, The Daily Mail, The Sunday Times, Seeker, Technology Networks, and Science Daily.

Welcome to our new administrative assistant, Rosanna Turner, and to Carol Coricelli, a visiting scholar from the International School of Advanced Studies (SISSA) in Trieste, Italy.

New papers forthcoming: 

• Vesia, M., Barnett-Cowan, M., Elahi, B, Neva, J., Davare, M., Staines, W., Culham, J., & Chen, R. (In press). Human dorsomedial parieto-motor circuit specifies grasp during the planning of goal-directed hand actions. Cortex, 92, 175-186.

March 2017

New papers forthcoming: 

• Freud, E. Macdonald, S. N., Chen, J., Quinlan, D. J., Goodale, M. A., & Culham, J. C. (2017). Getting a grip on reality: Grasping movements directed to real objects and images rely on dissociable neural representations. Cortex.

• Hahamy, A., Macdonald, S. N., van den Heiligenberg, F., Kieliba, P., Malach, R., Emir, U., Brugger, P., Johansen-Berg, H., Culham, J. C., & Makin, T. R. (2017). Representation of multiple body parts in missing hand territory of congenital one-handers. Current Biology, 27, 1350-1355.

January 2017

New papers forthcoming:

• Chen, J., Snow, J. C., Culham, J. C., & Goodale, M. A. (2017). What role does ‘elongation’ play in ‘tool-specific’ activation and connectivity in the dorsal and ventral visual streams? Cerebral Cortex.

• van den Heiligenberg, F. M. Z., Yeung, N., Brugger, P., Culham, J. C. & Makin, T. R. (2017). Adaptable categorization of hands and tools in prosthesis users. Psychological Science, 28(3), 395-398.

September 2016

• Jody has returned from sabbatical

• Western's BrainsCAN initiative has won a $66 million grant from the Canada First Research Excellence Fund!