van der zwan

Username: van der zwan

Participant details

	Network Member	Ricky van der Zwan
	Organisation/Institution	Southern Cross University
	Department/Centre	Psychology
	Lab	Laboratory of Perceptual Processing
	Website	http://www.scu.edu.au/schools/psychology/index.php?page_id=26&menu=1_40
	Research area	Psychology inter-sensory interactions
	Research keywords

Research Interests

The Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Behaviour(CNAB: Co_Director Dr Anna Brooks) is engaged in a series of projects all aimed at describing the neural correlates of inter-sensory processing in humans and non-verbal human communication (types of unconscious body language). We have, in collaboration with Professor Olaf Blanke Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience at the Brain-Mind Institute of the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), been exploring interactions between auditory cues and biological motion perception. We have found that detection of coherent biological motion in noisey point-light displays can be facilitated by appropriate auditory cues (Brooks et al. 2006) but only when those cues are unique to the coherent motion figure (van der Zwan et al, in prep). In other words, figure/ground segregation can depend on visual/auditory interactions. In other work we are examining, with Dr David Cottrell, the Shams Illusion (the illusory flash effect) and have data suggesting the illusion is mediated by auditory interactions with the M-pathway within visual cortex. We have been, over the last two years, investigating also the relationship between music and induced emotions. In particular, we have been exploring which dimensions of music impact on experienced emotion (Melbourne et al. in prep).

Brooks A, Petreska B, Billard A, Spierer L, Clark S, Blanke O, & van der Zwan R (2006) Ears, eyes and bodies: audiovisual processing of biological motion cues. Neuropsychologia, in press.

van der Zwan R, Cottrell D, Brooks A, & Reid R (2006) Shams Illusion: Auditory modulation of M-pathway activity in occipital cortex. NeuroReport, submitted.

Member for: 4 years 4 months 3 days