Archived News
October 2022
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.
Kevin Stubbs (Brainscan fnirs programmer), HomA Vahidi (former honours student, now an M.Sc. Student at western) and Guy rens (postdoctoral fellow) receiving an award, socially distanced and outside.
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!August 2016
Many of us in the Culham Lab are remembering former lab postdoc (2004-2006), Cristiana Cavina Pratesi, who passed away on August 1, 2016. Cristiana was a talented and creative scientist who made many important discoveries. She was a doctoral student with Carlo Marzi in Verona, a postdoc with Mel Goodale and Jody Culham at Western, a postdoc with David Milner at Durham University and then a Lecturer and Senior Lecturer at Durham. In the Culham Lab, she discovered dissociations between object processing for grasping vs. perception (Cavina-Pratesi et al., 2007), identified a brain region, SPOC, that plays a role in arm transport (Cavina-Pratesi et al., 2010), contributed to a review of parietal lobe function (Culham, Cavina-Pratesi & Singhal, 2006), and was an active co-author on many other papers (for which in many cases, she played a key role in mentoring junior trainees). She was also a warm, funny, curious, generous lab member, colleague and friend. She will be greatly missed by all.
Those who wish to remember Cristiana can visit her tribute site or make a donation in her memory.
July 2016
Sara Fabbri's ambitious paper using Representational Similarity Analysis to investigate object grasping has been published:
Fabbri, S., Stubbs, K. M., Cusack, R., & Culham, J. C. (2016). Disentangling representations of object and grasp properties in the human brain. Journal of Neuroscience, 36(29), 7648-7662.
May 2016
PI Jody Culham has entered the "nomadical" phase of her sabbatical, which will take her to Jamaica, Alberta, the U. K., Portugal, Germany and Japan.
The first collaborative paper from the Culham Lab and our Canada-Germany CREATE-IRTG partners is out:
Gerhard, T. M., Culham, J. C. & Schwarzer, G. (2016). Distinct visual processing of real objects and pictures of those objects in 7- to 9-month-old infants. Frontiers in Developmental Psychology, 7, 827.
March 2016
Congratulations to postdoc Erez Freud, recipient of an Israeli Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship.
January 2016
Welcome to postdoctoral fellow Kaitlin Laidlaw, who has joined the Culham and Goodale labs following her PhD at UBC. Congratulations to Kaitlin for winning an NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowship (which pre-empted a Brain and Mind Institute Postdoctoral Fellowship).
Recent papers:
Squires, S. D., Macdonald, S. N., Culham, J. C., & Snow, J. C. (2016). Priming tool actions: Are real objects more effective primes than pictures? Experimental Brain Research, 234(4), 963-976.
Thaler, L., Paciocco, J. Daley, M., Lesniak, G. D., Purcell, D. W., Fraser, J. A., Dutton, G. N., Rossit, S., Goodale, M. A., & Culham, J. C. (2016). A selective impairment of perception of sound motion direction in peripheral space: A case study. Neuropsychologia , 80, 79-89.
Stöttinger, E., Filipowicz, A., Valadao, D., Culham, J., Goodale, M., Anderson, B., & Danckert, J. (2016). A cortical network that marks the moment when conscious representations are updated. Neuropsychologia, 79, 113-122.
October 2015
Media coverage of Dr. Jacqueline Snow's recent Journal of Neuroscience paper
Snow, J. C., Goodale, M. A., & Culham, J. C. (2015). Preserved haptic shape processing after bilateralLOC lesions. Journal of Neuroscience, 35(40), 13745-13760..
September 2015
Lab PI Jody Culham has begun her sabbatical for 2015-16 and is now in at the Center for Mind/Brain Sciences (CIMeC) at the University of Trento in Italy. She will be at CIMeC in Trento (Sept. 2015-Feb 2016) and at SISSA in Trieste Italy (March-April 2016) before beginning a "nomadical" phase (May-Aug 2016) that will take her to Oxford and the UK, Marburg & Giessen Germany, and Asia.
Welcome to Dr. Erez Freud, a new postdoctoral fellow who will be co-supervised with Dr. Marlene Behrmann at Carnegie-Mellon University and based in Pittsburgh
Congratulations to Dr. Jenni Karl, a postdoc in the Culham Lab (2014-15) who landed a tenure-track faculty position at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops BC.
Congratulations to Margarita Malseva, who successfully defended her Master's thesis on "Congruent familiar size relationships decrease size contrast illusion" in August 2015 and will be pursuing a PhD in the Culham lab
We have several new papers published or in press:
Quinlan, D. J., & Culham, J. C. (In press). Direct comparisons of hand and mouth kinematics during grasping, feeding and fork-feeding actions. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.
Macdonald, S. N. & Culham, J. C. (2015). Do human brain areas involved in visuomotor actions show a preference for real tools over visually similar non-tools? Neuropsychologia, 77, 35-41.
Barnett-Cowan, M., Snow, J. C., & Culham, J. C. (2015). Contribution of bodily and gravitational orientation cues to face and letter recognition. Multisensory Research, 28(5-6), 427-442.
Hutchison, R. M., Culham, J. C., Flanagan, J. R., Everling, S., & Gallivan, J. P. (2015). Functional subdivisions of medial parieto-occipital cortex in humans and nonhuman primates using resting-state fMRI. NeuroImage, 116, 10-29.
April 2015:
Two new papers from the lab have been published:
Gallivan, J. P., & Culham, J. C. (2015). Neural coding within human brain areas involved in actions. Invited review article, Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 33, 141-149.
Monaco, S., Sedda, A., Cavina-Pratesi, C, & Culham, J. C. (2015). Neural correlates of object size and object location during grasping actions. European Journal of Neuroscience, 41(4), 454-465.
September 2014:
Welcome to two new members of the lab. Jenni Karl, who won an NSERC postdoctoral fellowship, will be joining the lab following her PhD at the University of Lethbridge. Ben Chang will be joining the lab as a doctoral student following his Master's from Queen's University.
Thanks to those leaving the lab for their valued contributions. Joey Paciocco (former Master's student and Research Assistant) will be taking on a new position as a Program Coordinator at the Student Success Centre at Western. Haleemah and Hameedah Ahmed (former visiting scholars) will be returning to the University of Bologna.
July 2014
NSERC has announced the award of a Collaborative Research and Training Experience (CREATE) Grant to a team at York, Western and Queen's Universities for joint training with labs in German at Philipps-Universität Marburg and Justus-Liebig Universität in Giessen (funded by a partnered German DFG IRTG grant). The CREATE grant will be headed by Doug Crawford at York. The Culham Lab has two participating trainees (Lucilla Cardinali, postdoctoral fellow; Ben Chang, PhD student) and one affiliated student (Rita Maltseva, Master's student). We may be looking for additional students to participate once Jody returns from her sabbatical in Fall 2016. More information is available at http://www.uni-marburg.de/fb13/forschung/neurophysik/brainact
June 2014
Culham Lab alumna Christine Carter was featured in an online piece by the National Arts Centre.
May 2014
Our work with a woman who has a fascinating neurological syndrome was featured on National Public Radio in the US in a piece called "The Blind Woman Who Sees Rain, But Not Her Daughter's Smile." You can hear a 10-min radio interview or see a 3-min video simulating her visual experiences.
February 2014:
Congratulations to Culham Lab alumna Sara Fabbri, recognized for her excellence by Radboud University!
We are pleased to welcome TC Chiang to our lab. TC has some exciting research planned using Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation
January 2014:
Sara Fabbri has taken a post doctoral position at Radboud University Nijmegen, Netherlands. We will miss Sara and wish her all the best in her new position
November 2013:
Jody Culham is participating in Research Matters, a public research initiative run by the Council of Ontario Universities that explores how Ontario university research affects everyday life, and improves the ways people live, work and play. She will be participating in a free public event in London on November 26, 2013 to discuss "What Matters Now?"
October 2013:
Jody Culham did an interview with Nora Young on CBC Radio1's Spark program. She discussed work done in collaboration with Jacqueline Snow (former postdoctoral fellow, now a professor at the University of Nevada Reno) on how real objects differ from photographs. You can listen to the interview here, or download the podcast here.
September 2013:
Welcome to Margarita Maltseva, new Master's student in Psychology
August 2013:
Congratulations to Dr. Michael Barnett-Cowan, former Banting postdoctoral fellow and new Assistant Professor at the University of Waterloo
July 2013:
Congratulations to Dr. Jacqueline Snow, former postdoctoral fellow and new Assistant Professor at the University of Nevada Reno
June 2013 Recent Papers:
Gallivan, J. P., McLean, D. A., Valyear, K. F., & Culham, J. C. (2013). Decoding the neural mechanisms of human tool use. eLife, 2, e00424 [new online open-access general biology journal sponsored by Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Max Planck Institute and Wellcome Trust].
Gallivan, J. P., Chapman, C. S., McLean, D. A., Flanagan, J. R., & Culham, J. C. (In press). Activity patterns in category-selective occipitotemporal cortex predict upcoming motor actions. European Journal of Neuroscience.
Rossit, S. McAdam, T., McLean, D. A., Goodale, M. A., & Culham, J. C. (2013). fMRI reveals a lower visual field preference for hand actions in human superior-parietal occipital cortex (SPOC) and precuneus. Cortex.
Milne, J.L., Chapman, C.S., Gallivan, J.P., Wood, D.K., Culham, J.C., & Goodale, M.A. (2013). Connecting the Dots: Object connectedness deceives perception but not movement. Psychological Science.
Gallivan, J. P., McLean, D. A., Flanagan, J. R., & Culham, J. C. (2013). Where one hand meets the other: Limb-specific and goal-dependent movement plans decoded from preparatory signals in single human parieto-frontal brain areas. Journal of Neuroscience, 33(5), 1991-2008
October 2012:
Jody is now serving as a Reviewing Editor at a new top-tier open access biosciences journal, eLife
August 2012:
Congratulations to Joey Paciocco for successfully defending his M.Sc. thesis in Neuroscience.
Welcome to Dr. Lucilla Cardinali, who joined the lab as a postdoctoral fellow. Lucilla did a Ph.D with Alessandro Farne at INSERM in Lyon, France.
April 2012 Recent Papers:
Hutchison, R. M., Gallivan, J. P., Culham, J. C., Gati, J. S., Menon, R. S., & Everling, S. (2012). Functional connectivity of the frontal eye fields in humans and macaque monkeys investigated with resting-state fMRI. Journal of Neurophysiology.
Valyear, K. F., Gallivan, J. P., McLean, D. A. & Culham, J. C. (2012). fMRI repetition suppression for familiar but not arbitrary actions with tools. Journal of Neuroscience, 32(12), 4247-4259.
January 2012:
Welcome to Dr. Michael Barnett-Cowan, who has joined the lab as a postdoctoral fellow. Michael was previously a postdoc at the Max Planck Institute in Tuebingen and did his Ph.D. with Laurence Harris at York.
January 2012 Recent Papers:
Snow, J. C., Pettypiece, C., McAdam, T. D., McLean, A. D., Stroman, P. W., Goodale, M. A., & Culham, J. C. (2011). Bringing the real world into the fMRI scanner: Repetition effects for pictures versus real objects. Scientific Reports, 1, Article number 130.
Gallivan, J. P., McLean, D. A., Smith, F. W., & Culham, J. C. (2011). Decoding effector-dependent and effector-independent movement intentions from human parieto-frontal brain activity. Journal of Neuroscience, 31(47), 17149-17168.
Gallivan, J. P., McLean, D. A., & Culham, J. C. (2011). Neuroimaging reveals enhanced activation in a reach-selective brain area for objects located within participants' typical hand workspaces. Neuropsychologia, 49, 3710-3721.
Secen, J. Culham, J., Ho, C., & Giaschi, D. (2011). Neural correlates of the multiple-object tracking deficit in amblyopia. Vision Research, 51(23-24), 2517-2527.
Wood, D. K., Gallivan, J. P., Chapman, C. S., Milne, J. L., Culham, J. C. & Goodale, M. A. (2011). Visual salience dominates early visuomotor competition in reaching behavior. Journal of Vision, 11 (10):16, 1-11.
December 2011:
Congratulations to Dr. Mark Daley, who successfully defended his M.Sc. thesis in Neuroscience. Following his study leave to do the Master's, Mark resumed his position as Associate Professor in Computer Science.
November 2011:
Welcome to Dr. Sara Fabbri, who joined the lab as a postdoctoral fellow. Sara did a Ph.D with Angelika Lingnau and Alfonso Caramazza at the University of Trento.
September 2011:
Welcome to Scott Macdonald, a new Master's student in Neuroscience. Scott did his bachelor's degree at Mount Allison with Dr. Genevieve Desmarais.
August 2011:
Congratulations to Dr. Jason Gallivan, who successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis in Neuroscience. Jason will be doing a postdoctoral fellowship with Dr. Randy Flanagan at Queen's University.
June 2011 Recent Papers:
Gallivan, J. P., McLean, D. A., Valyear, K.F., Pettypiece, C. E., & Culham, J. C. (2011). Decoding action intentions from preparatory brain activity in human parieto-frontal networks. Journal of Neuroscience, 31(26), 9610-9599.
Valyear, K. F., Chapman, C. S., Gallivan, J. P., Mark, R. S., & Culham, J. C. (2011). To use or to move: Goal set modulates priming when grasping real tools. Experimental Brain Research, 212, 125-142.
Gallivan, J. P., Chapman, C. S., Wood, D. K., Milne, J. L., Ansari, D., Culham, J. C., & Goodale, M. A. (2011, published online). One to four, and nothing more: Non-conscious parallel object individuation in action. Psychological Science. Published online before print May 11, 2011, doi: 10.1177/0956797611408733
Chapman, C. S., Gallivan, J. P., Culham, J. C. & Goodale, M. A. (2011). Mental blocks: fMRI reveals top-down modulation of early visual cortex when obstacles interfere with grasp planning. Neuropsychologia, 49, 1703-1717.
June 2011:
Congratulations to former PhD student Ken Valyear for winning the Governor General’s Gold Medal for outstanding academic achievement by a graduate student (one of two such awards at Western) and Collip Medal Award for outstanding PhD student graduating from a basic science program in the Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry.
December 2010:
The Culham Lab moved to new facilities in the Brain and Mind Institute in the Natural Sciences Centre at Western
December 2010:
Ken Valyear successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis, "Perception meets action: fMRI and behavioural investigations of human tool use." He will be doing an NSERC-sponsored postdoctoral fellowship with Scott Frey at the University of Oregon. Congratulations Dr. Valyear!
November 2010:
Jody appeared on the 35th anniversary show for Quirks & Quarks on CBC radio to discuss fMRI
June 2010:
Jody Culham received an NSERC E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellowship. Read about it on Western News!
October 2009:
Jody participated in a discussion panel "Who Am I?" for a "Science in the Pub" night at the Quantum to Cosmos Festival at the Perimeter Institute
November 2009:
Our research was profiled in Western News.
October 2009 - Articles in press:
Monaco, S., Kroliczak, G., Quinlan, D. J., Fattori, P., Galletti, C., Goodale, M.A., & Culham, J.C. (In press). Contribution of visual and proprioceptive information to the precision of reaching movements. Experimental Brain Research.
Wong, Y., Aldcroft, A., Large, M.-E., Culham, J. & Vilis, T. (In press). The role of temporal synchrony as a binding cue for visual persistence in early visual areas: an fMRI study. Journal of Neurophysiology.
Danckert, J. & Culham, J. C. (In press). Reflections on blindsight: Neuroimaging and behavioural exploration clarify a case of reversed localization in the blind field of a patient with hemianopia. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology.
Barry, R. L., Williams, J. M., Klassen, L. M., Culham, J. C., & Menon, R. S. (In press). Preprocessing pipeline considerations to compensate for paradigm-related subject movement in BOLD functional MRI. Magnetic Resonance Imaging.
Pettypiece, C. E., Goodale, M. A., & Culham, J. C. (In press). Integration of haptic and visual size cues in perception and action revealed through crossmodal conflict. Experimental Brain Research.
April 2009 - Three new papers are in press:
Pettypiece, C., Culham, J. C., & Goodale, M. A. (In press). Differential effects of delay upon visually and haptically guided grasping and perceptual judgments. Experimental Brain Research.
Valyear, K. F. & Culham, J. C. (In press). Observing learned object-specific functional grasps preferentially activates the ventral stream. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.
Malfait, N., Valyear, K. F., Culham, J. C., Anton, J.-L., & Gribble, P. L. (In press). fMRI activation during observation of others' reach errors. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.
January 2009 - A new paper is in press at Journal of Neuroscience:
Gallivan, J. P., Cavina-Pratesi, C., & Culham, J. C. (In press). Is that within reach?: fMRI reveals that the human superior parieto-occipital cortex (SPOC) encodes objects reachable by the hand. Journal of Neuroscience.
A new paper is in press at Neuropsychologia:
Cohen, N. R., Cross, E. S., Tunik, E., Grafton, S. T., & Culham, J. C. (2009). Ventral and dorsal stream contributions to the online control of immediate and delayed grasping: A TMS approach. Neuropsychologia.
September 2008 - A new paper is in press at Journal of Neurophysiology:
Kroliczak, G., McAdam, T. D., Quinlan, D. J., & Culham, J. C. (In press). The human dorsal stream adapts to real actions and 3D shape processing: A functional magnetic resonance imaging study. Journal of Neurophysiology.
Jody is off on sabbatical and heading to MIT & Harvard (for two weeks in Sept 2008), the University of Maastricht, Netherlands (Sept-Dec 2008), and the University of Bologna (Jan-May 2009).
Charlie Pettypiece began his M.Sc. in Neuroscience, co-supervised by Jody Culham and Mel Goodale, after spending two years in the lab as an undergraduate research assistant and NSERC summer scholar.
August 2008:
Congratulations to both Derek Quinlan and Yvonne Wong on successfully defending their Ph.D. theses! Derek will be working as a research project manager for Dr. Graham Reid at Western.
We had our annual Culham Lab summer party
The new Siemens 3T Tim Trio has arrived at Robarts. See Jody's photos and CFMM photos and updates (broken links).
November 2007:
The highly productive but aged 4T at Robarts Research Institute is being decommissioned. We look forward to the arrival of a new Siemens 3T MRI scanner and a Varian 7T MRI scanner, estimated to arrive in the summer of 2008, once construction of the new MRI wing is completed.
July 2007:
New pictures from this year's summer Lab BBQ have been posted in the Lab Photos section