The study, published yesterday in the Journal of Neuroscience, focuses on the superior colliculus, a structure buried deep within the brain, inherited from animals like frogs and toads. This ancient visual system orients primitive animals toward food, danger and sexual partners.

“We found that the superior colliculus performs a similar function in higher animals such as humans,” says study co-author Joseph DeSouza, a psychology professor in 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Health. “This ‘inner eye’ is oriented towards survival, feeding and reproduction. As such, these types of gazes are more difficult to suppress.”

Right:��Joseph DeSouza

Working with a team of investigators at the University’s ��(CVR), DeSouza and fellow 91��ɫ psychology Professor Doug Crawford found that superior colliculus neurons produce a burst of activity during combined eye-and-head gaze shifts.

Crawford explains that they determined what the superior colliculus codes were by recording neural activity during natural, variable eye and head movements. They then compared this activity to target locations (briefly displayed visual stimuli) and gaze end-points (where the subjects actually looked), measured relative to the eye, head or body.

“Despite being movement-related, superior colliculus neurons gave the most consistent activity compared to one simple variable: target location relative to the eyes. In this sense, the superior colliculus provides an ‘inner eye' that drives eye and neck muscles toward the target,” says Crawford, the Canada Research Chair in Visuomotor Neuroscience.

Left: Doug Crawford��

In previous work at the University of Western Ontario, DeSouza showed that a much newer system, the prefrontal cortex, is required to suppress these primitive responses. Refreshingly, both sexes are equally “toad-like” when it comes to wandering eyes.

“The superior colliculus is gender neutral. Both women and men have trouble suppressing these primitive gazes. There is, however, the question of whether one gender tends to be more obvious about it,” DeSouza says.

The study, “Intrinsic Reference Frames of Superior Colliculus Visuomotor Receptive Fields During Head-Unrestrained Gaze Shifts,” was funded by a Canadian Institutes of Health Research grant to Crawford and DeSouza. The article’s other authors are: Gerald Keith, CVR post-doc; Xiaogang Yan, CVR research associate, Gunnar Blohm, professor of neuroscience at Queen’s University, former CVR post-doc; and Hongying Wang, CVR research associate.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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The new directors are Professor Colin Coates, director of the Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies (RCCS); Professor Laurence Harris, director of the Centre for Vision Research (CVR); Professor Christina Kraenzle, director of the Canadian Centre for German��& European Studies (CCGES); Professor David Mutimer, director of the Centre for International��& Security Studies (YCISS); and Professor Lisa Philipps, director of the Centre for Public Policy & Law (YCPPL).����

“On behalf of the 91��ɫ research community, I would like to congratulate Professors Coates, Harris, Kraenzle, Mutimer and Philipps on their appointments,” said Robert Haché, 91��ɫ's vice-president research & innovation.��“Their leadership expertise will be essential to further strengthening the unique and exciting opportunities for interdisciplinary research, collaborations and partnerships at 91��ɫ’s research centres and institutes.”

Colin Coates (left), Canada Research Chair in Cultural Landscapes, is also professor in the Canadian Studies program at Glendon College and president of the Canadian Studies Network-Réseau d’études canadiennes.��His research examines political culture in New France and the history of Canadian utopias.��He also conducts research in the area of environmental history, and is an executive member��of the��Network in Canadian History & Environment – Nouvelle initiative canadienne en histoire de l’environnement, funded by��the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). Coates has co-edited and authored several books including, Introduction aux études canadiennes: histoires, identités et cultures (with Professor Geoffrey Ewen, Glendon) and Visions: the Canadian History Modules Project (with Professor Marcel Martel, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies,��along with four colleagues from other universities), Majesty in Canada: Essays on the Role of Royalty among others.��Coates won the Lionel Groulx-Yves Saint-Germain Foundation’s prize for Heroines and History – Representations of Madeleine de Verchères and Laura Secord (co-authored with Cecilia Morgan of OISE).

Laurence Harris (right)��is a professor in the Department of Psychology, Faculty of Health, a member of the graduate programs in Kinesiology��& Health Science and in Biology, and has served as chair of the Psychology Department. He is the director the Multisensory Integration Laboratory at 91��ɫ, which investigates how information from visual, auditory, vestibular, proprioceptive and tactile senses is combined by the brain to create our perception of body and space. Applications of his research include the design of virtual environments and improving perception in situations where sensory information is impoverished, such as in the unusual environments of underwater or in space, in ageing or in clinical conditions such as partial blindness or Parkinson’s disease.��Recently, Harris��ran an��experiment on the International Space Station looking at astronauts’ perception of orientation. He is the author of��more than��100 scientific articles and has edited nine books on topics pertaining to vision including Vision in 3D Environments, Cortical Mechanisms of Vision, Seeing Spatial Form, and Levels of Perception. ��He is editor-in-chief of the journal Seeing and Perceiving: a journal of multisensory science.

Christina Kraenzle (left) is a professor in the Department of Languages, Literatures��& Linguistics (DLLL) in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies.��She has served as a CCGES affiliate since 2004 and been a member of the centre’s executive committee since 2005 through her role as the coordinator of the German Studies Program within DLLL.��Kraenzle’s research explores modern German literature, film and culture, with a focus on transnational cultural production, migration, travel and globalization. Her recent publications include Mapping Channels Between Ganges and Rhein: German-Indian Cross-Cultural Relations (with Jörg Esleben and Sukanya Kulkarni, 2008) as well as articles in The German Quarterly, German Life and Letters, Transit: A Journal of Travel, Migration and Multiculturalism in the German-Speaking World, and the volume Searching for Sebald: Photography after W. G. Sebald.

David Mutimer (right), a professor in the Department of Political Science, is also the founding editor of Critical Studies on Security and the editor of The Canadian Annual Review of Politics and Public Affairs.�� He has been a member of YCISS since 1987 and has previously served as its deputy director.��Mutimer was also��a visiting professor at the University of Geneva in Switzerland and Newcastle University in the United Kingdom (UK), as well as a principal research fellow in the Department of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford in the UK.��Mutimer’s research considers issues of contemporary international security through lenses provided by critical social theory and explores the reproduction of security in and through popular culture.��His research has focused on various aspects of weapons production and control, and more recently on the politics of the global war on terror, and of the regional wars around the world which are being fought by Canada and its allies.��Mutimer is presently leading a SSHRC-funded international research project on arms export controls.��His recent published work includes journal articles in Studies in Social Justice, The Cambridge Review of International Affairs and Contemporary Security Policy among others.

Lisa Philipps (left) has been a faculty member��at Osgoode Hall Law School since 1996.��Prior to that, she held appointments in the faculties of law at the University of Victoria and the University of British Columbia, and has held visiting professorships at Melbourne Law School, University College London and the University of Toronto among other institutions.��She served as associate dean research, graduate studies & institutional relations at Osgoode from 2009 to 2011.��Philipps' research focuses on tax law, budgets and feminist legal studies.��She has published widely on topics, including��fiscal transparency, income splitting, gender��budgeting, the distributional impact of tax cuts, the tax treatment of unpaid work, charitable tax incentives and more. Most recently she published two co-edited books on Tax Expenditures: State of the Art and Challenging Gender Inequality in Tax Policy Making: Comparative Perspectives.����

In all, 91��ɫ��lists 29 research centres and institutes.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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