"We try to touch on everyone's area of study in vision research, from brain and visual-motor plasticity to computer models and robotics," says 91亚色 psychology Professor Jennifer Steeves (right).

The conference will take place June 15 to 18 in the Computer Science & Engineering Building (CSEB), Keele campus. Registration will take place in the CSEB lobby and speaker presentations will be held in CSEB Lecture Hall C. It is hosted by 91亚色's in the .

One of the speakers, professor of biological sciences and neuroscience of Mt. Holyoke College, will discuss her own experiences and research with the extent of the brain's plasticity. At one time it was believed that the brain was only malleable during a "critical period" in early childhood, but then, at the age of 48, Barry overcame the stereoblindness she'd had since infancy through optometric vision therapy. She realized at that point there was no absolute "critical period" and that the brain could change and adapt well into adulthood.

Left: Susan Barry

Barry will review the natural history of infantile esotropia聽鈥� where one or both eyes turn in 鈥� demonstrate several rehabilitation procedures that promote stereovision and describe possible mechanisms for wiring changes in the brain. She is the author of Fixing My Gaze: A Scientist's Journey into Seeing in Three Dimensions (2009).

Professor of the University of California, San Francisco, will discuss brain plasticity across the human lifespan and how all plasticity mechanisms are, by their fundamental nature, reversible. A large body of behavioural, electrophysiological and neuroimaging studies have documented the progressive neurological changes that arise as a function of normal aging and as expressions of chronic neurological and psychiatric diseases.

"I shall argue that a number of these illnesses represent failure modes of our self-organizing neurological machinery," says Merzenich. These studies of the neurological distortions recorded in patient populations provide "roadmaps" for potentially addressing plasticity-induced changes therapeutically. "I shall illustrate this therapeutic potential by discussing our early progress in developing treatments designed to prevent and/or ameliorate the expressions of chronic neurological and psychiatric illness."

Professor (right) of Georgetown University will present his talk on "Functional Specialization in the Visual Cortex of the Blind", which looks at how the modules in the brain responsible for sight retain their functional specialization in people blind from birth. The difference is that these modules are "hijacked" by input from a non-visual modality, such as audition or touch.

Professor of the University of Montreal will discuss "Cross-Modal Plasticity in Blind and Deaf Subjects: Results on Cortical Reorganization and Performance Do Not Seem to Always Point in the Same Direction".

Left: Franco Lepore

"Numerous results obtained in our laboratory on blind individuals consistently indicate that when tested on behavioural tasks, such as tone discrimination, sound localization in far and near space, navigation on a tactile labyrinth or in angle discrimination, they generally outperform the sighted," says Lepore. "At the cortical level, it appears that this supra-performance rests on the recruitment of visual areas." However, the same does not seem to hold true for deaf individuals, who show somewhat poorer visual abilities for even low-level functions.

Registration information, including a compete and abstracts, is available online. For more information or to download the conference program, visit the website or contact Teresa Manini, Centre for Vision Research administrative assistant, at manini@cvr.yorku.ca.

Republished courtesy of YFile鈥� 91亚色鈥檚 daily e-bulletin.

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鈥淭he take home message is that autism research here at 91亚色 isn鈥檛 just one thing,鈥� psychology Professor Jonathan Weiss, chair of the 91亚色 Autism Research Alliance (YARA)聽in the Faculty of Health, told the audience. 鈥淲e want you to have a picture as you walk away from today聽of the breadth聽at which different faculty members with different areas of expertise are doing research.鈥�

Left: Dorota Crawford (standing, left) and Jonathan Weiss answering questions from the audience

YARA聽is an interdisciplinary team of researchers at 91亚色 that has been in existence for about two years. This was the first time it has reached out to聽a large range of聽community service providers as a group. The event was sponsored by .

鈥淭he goal was to provide an overview of the incredible range of autism research at 91亚色 and reach out to service providers and start a conversation with them,鈥� said Weiss. 鈥淚t鈥檚 really about knowledge exchange. This was the first step in that exchange, and they can let us know what they are interested in. Rather than a one way street, it breaks down the academic silos.鈥�

Weiss has just finished two pilot projects using聽cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) with people with ASD 鈥� one used聽CBT to help reduce anxiety and the other used it聽to help build anger management skills. Weiss wants to know if the interventions that already exist can be adapted to help children with ASD, who also suffer from things like anxiety and aggression.

Right: Kari Hoffman explains her research at the inaugural showcase of the 91亚色 Autism Research Alliance

But that鈥檚 not all; he is also interested in knowing whether the level of health care and access to service for families with a teenager or adult with ASD is lacking in various parts of the province, what health care services they need and their experience of the system, and has embarked on a study to find out.

Dorota Crawford, a professor in 91亚色鈥檚 School of Kinesiology & Health Science, told the gathering she is researching whether genes or the environment are responsible for ASD. One of the things she is doing is trying to identify the genes responsible for specific symptoms of ASD and determine how they affect brain function. She has so far recruited 20 families with a child with ASD to give genetic material samples through a mouth swab to be able to compare genes. She is hoping her research will lead to an earlier diagnosis (before the age of two), earlier intervention and development of specific pharmaceuticals.

鈥淭he incidence of autism in the last three decades has increased dramatically,鈥� she said. In 1977, only one in 2,500 people were diagnosed with ASD, while in 2009 one in 106 people were diagnosed. Of those being diagnosed, males are four times as likely as females to have ASD.

Left: From left, Jonathan Weiss, Adrienne Perry, James Bebko, Dorota Crawford, Jennifer Steeves, Maz Fallah, Louise Hartley, director of the 91亚色 Psychology Clinic, and Tania Xerri, director of the Health Leadership & Learning Network

Psychology Professor Kari Hoffman told the audience about her work with social and emotional processing, the destination points for processing and the routes taken, which may be different in people with ASD than in a typical person.

School of Kinesiology & Health Science Professor Maz Fallah is interested in what things people with ASD pay attention to that may differ from others, what is the reason for that and what interventions could help. People who have an ASD have a persistent preoccupation with parts. 鈥淭hey cannot see the forest for the trees,鈥� says Fallah, and that might have to do with an object-based attention deficit, for instance.

As psychology Professor Jennifer Steeves says, 鈥淭here鈥檚 a lot we take for granted when we look around the room, but there鈥檚 a lot of computations that are taking place in the brain.鈥�

This plays into what psychology Professor James Bebko is researching. Children with ASD don鈥檛 seem to be able to combine visual and auditory cues into a single unit, which is needed to assess emotion when watching and listening to someone talking. Their sensory systems seem largely intact, he said, so it may be that the problem lies in the processing or the transitional skills needed before the processing occurs.

What psychology Professor Adrienne Perry is looking into is the effectiveness of Intensive Behavioural Intervention (IBI), the program of choice for treating children with ASD. But Perry says the results in the field are variable compared to those in a controlled situation and she wants to know why. She is looking at the predictors of how well IBI works, such as age, IQ and severity of autism, as well as parent involvement.

鈥淚t鈥檚 great to see that research is going to look at family stress and at the IBI. We really struggle in the community to know what to do,鈥� said Penny Diamantopoulos, a case manager with the child and family team of the (Central CCAC).

Dawn Ullman, also a case manager at Central CCAC, says she hopes the alliance does some follow up with the community in the next year or so. She would like to know what the results are of some of the research the professors highlighted. 鈥淚 really want to know the bottom line鈥� as the person working with the families.

For more information, visit the 91亚色 Autism Research Alliance website.

Republished courtesy of YFile鈥� 91亚色鈥檚 daily e-bulletin.

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If you were wandering through Vari Hall last Wednesday afternoon, you could have stopped and chatted with聽fourth-year psychology students about聽some pretty esoteric聽subjects.

The rotunda was a maze of posters featuring聽the thesis projects of 78 students ready to explain whether聽eating disturbances are聽symptoms of depression, how to measure prejudice, the relationship between exercise and forgiveness, how聽sound affects perception of space. Their research projects, supervised by聽faculty members,聽spanned all areas of聽psychology聽鈥� cognitive, social, developmental, quantitative, history and theory, neuroscience, and clinical.

The end-of-year event has become so big that the Department of Psychology moved it to Vari Hall last year from the crowded halls of the Behavioural Science Building.

The poster projects are worth five per cent of students鈥� final mark and judged by roving graduate students based on clarity, design and the students鈥� ability to explain their research in a comprehensive manner.聽Many will go on to present their research at a variety of national and international conferences.

鈥淲hether you are speaking to your supervisor,聽other professors or聽fellow students, it is important to know how to present and communicate your results to different audiences,鈥� says psychology Professor Susan Murtha, who has organized the event for the past three years.

And the students who go on to graduate studies will have to defend their research to external examiners who don鈥檛 know much about their field. 鈥淚t is really important to be able to understand how to communicate.鈥�

Left: Poster winners Angela Deotto (top) and Lilly Solomon. Photos by Brett Thompson

By 4pm, judges had selected two who did it best: Angela Deotto (supervised by Christine Till) for her poster "Mathematical impairment in pediatric-onset multiple sclerosis: Relationship with white matter integrity"; and Lilly Solomon (supervised by Jennifer Steeves) for her poster "MS to the 鈥榦ccipital face area鈥� affects face recognition but not categorization". They won $50 gift certificates to the 91亚色 Bookstore.

Both Steeves and Till are members of the .

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The study, recently published in the journal Neuropsychologia looked at a rare disorder called prosopagnosia, in which the ability to visually identify faces is lost or severely impaired.

Researchers performed a series of experiments that gauged prosopagnosia sufferers' recognition of faces, objects and voices and other sounds, both separately and in varying combinations; the scientists compared these results to those of control subjects with normal brain functioning.

"We were interested in investigating the interactions between different types of sensory inputs," says lead researcher Jennifer Steeves (left), a professor of psychology in 91亚色鈥檚 . "For example, does seeing a person鈥檚 face and listening to them speaking at the same time offer more helpful information to identify that person, or is a single sensory input superior?"

Steeves鈥� experiments involved a patient who suffered brain damage from meningitis as a child. With extensive lesions on the right hemisphere and most of the ventral visual areas, he was unable to recognize familiar faces, facial expressions, objects, colours or words.

"Quite remarkably, even with these deficits, he was able to hold a job and maintain an independent lifestyle," Steeves says. "We wanted to find out what cognitive functions were compensating to help him achieve this."

In one experiment, participants were required to rapidly learn the identities of 10 individuals,聽using an聽image of a face paired with a voice.

Prior to this exercise, subjects were presented with grey-scale images of 110 female faces that had been stripped of distinguishing features. They were also fed auditory stimuli 鈥� a 20-second neutral passage spoken in English by one of 110 female voices. Participants were then tested on what they had learned in visual and auditory-only modes, and in combination.

Steeves and her colleagues found that control subjects relied more heavily on visual cues, while the patient with prosopagnosia used auditory information more expertly to recognize people. However, auditory cues didn鈥檛 help in identifying objects, leading researchers to believe that our processing of people and things occur in two different neurological pathways.

Untangling this web of sensory cues is important on more than one level, Steeves notes. "Our hope is that it will help not only our understanding of those with brain disorders, but also to understand how healthy brains function," she says.

The study, "Superior voice recognition in a patient with acquired prosopagnosia and object agnosia," is co-authored by Adria Hoover, a 91亚色 psychology graduate student, and Jean-Fran莽ois D茅monet, director of France鈥檚 Institut National de la Sant茅 et de la Recherche M茅dicale (INSERM).

Steeves is one of the researchers based in 91亚色鈥檚 new state-of-the-art Sherman Health Science Research Centre, which officially opened on Sept. 14.聽She leads the Perceptual Neuroscience Laboratory, which is based on the building鈥檚 main level. Both Steeves and her lab are part of the .

The research was funded by the and France鈥檚 .

By Melissa Hughes, media relations officer. Republished courtesy of YFile鈥� 91亚色鈥檚 daily e-bulletin

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Here's an on June 24. The story's had 86 tweets and 335 Diggs:

It's long been an accepted truth among married couples that it's the wife who must usually steer the pair through social gatherings, reminding her husband if he's meeting someone for the first, second or 15th time 鈥� and science backs up that observation.

In lab settings, women routinely outperform men in facial recognition skills, both in terms of speed and reliability. Now, research from 91亚色 in Toronto has added a wrinkle to the existing wisdom. It's not just women whose brains are so nimble, the investigators have determined, it's gay men, too.

In the Canadian study, Jennifer Steeves, a psychology professor in 91亚色鈥檚 Faculty of Health, recruited a sample group composed of homosexual men, heterosexual men and heterosexual women. Significantly, she also took care to include both left- and right-handed people among the subjects. All of the volunteers were shown pictures of 10 faces and given time to try to memorize them. Those 10 faces were mixed with similarly edited images of 50 other people, and flashed on a screen for just milliseconds apiece. The subjects' job was to press a key when they saw a face they'd seen before.

The results confirmed what the investigators suspected they'd find: the gay men and the straight women scored about equally well in the test, and both did better than the straight men. What's more, within the straight male group, lefties outperformed righties. The explanation is rooted mostly in the genes.

All people are born with genetic coding that regulates body symmetry and asymmetry. This includes not just handedness, but which way the whorl in the hair at the crown of the head grows, or which hemisphere of the brain will be dominant for processing language. "Characteristics like this are determined very, very early on," says Steeves. "A baby's handedness can sometimes even be observed in utero."

If sex and symmetry get mixed up this way, there's no reason the phenomenon should sidestep the brain, and Steeves does not think it does. Gay men, she believes, probably do so well at recognizing faces because, like women, they're putting both hemispheres to work at once. Greater crosstalk between the two halves via the corpus callosum 鈥� the cable of nerve fibres that serves as sort of a superhighway between left and right 鈥� probably contributes to this as well. That, however, is not something Steeves and her colleagues have been able to demonstrate conclusively yet, since they have not had the chance to rerun their study while simultaneously scanning the brains of their subjects with a functional magnetic resonance imager (fMRI). "The University just doesn't have one," she says. "But we're getting one soon and we'll be able to take that next step then."

None of this means that it will ever be possible simply to take an fMRI of a brain and tell from that alone if it belongs to a homosexual or heterosexual 鈥� and given privacy concerns and the risk of bias, Steeves wouldn't even want to try. "I would hesitate to do post-hoc analysis," she says. "There are scary things that could happen with that." What it does mean, however, is that science's understanding of the roots of sexuality, so long shrouded in misinformation, is steadily edging into the light 鈥� and there's nothing scary about that.

The Times of India Online and DailyIndia.com covered the research June 23:

A new study by 91亚色 researchers has shown that gay men can recall familiar faces faster and more accurately than their heterosexual counterparts because, like women, they use both sides of their brains.

The study examined the influence of gender, sexual orientation and whether we鈥檙e right- or聽 left-handed on our ability to recognize faces. It found that when memorizing and discriminating between faces, homosexual men show patterns of bilaterality 鈥� the usage of both sides of the brain 鈥� similar to heterosexual women. Heterosexual men tend to favour the right hemisphere for such tasks.

Jennifer Steeves, psychology professor in 91亚色鈥檚 Faculty of Health, and her colleagues also investigated the influence of hand dominance on such tasks. They found that left-handed heterosexual participants had better face recognition abilities than left-handed homosexuals, and also outperformed right-handed heterosexuals. 鈥淥ur findings are consistent with what we know about the organization and laterality of how we process faces depending on our gender, sexual orientation and handedness,鈥� Steeves says.

The study was also covered in :

Gay men are on a par with women when it comes to never forgetting a face, according to a study.聽Homosexual men show patterns of bilaterality 鈥� using both sides of the brain 鈥� similar to heterosexual women.

"Our results suggest that both gay men and heterosexual women code faces bilaterally. That allows for faster retrieval of stored information," said study lead author Jennifer Steeves, at Toronto鈥檚 91亚色.

Stories on the research also appeared in Sun Media newspapers and June 22.

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer, with files courtesy of YFile鈥� 91亚色鈥檚 daily e-bulletin.

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The study, published in the journal, , examined the influence of gender, sexual orientation and whether we鈥檙e right-or-left-handed on our ability to recognize faces. It found that when memorizing and discriminating between faces, homosexual men show patterns of bilaterality 鈥� the usage of both sides of the brain 鈥� similar to heterosexual women. Heterosexual men tend to favour the right hemisphere for such tasks.

鈥淥ur results suggest that both gay men and heterosexual women code faces bilaterally. That allows for faster retrieval of stored information,鈥� says study lead author Jennifer Steeves, Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, .

Study participants were asked to memorize photographs of ten faces, and differentiate them from 50 others, shown to them for only milliseconds each. The images were rendered in black and white and edited to remove ears, hair and blemishes, which can serve as obvious identifying cues. Participants then had to relay which faces were new, as quickly and accurately as possible.

Steeves and her colleagues also investigated the influence of hand dominance on such tasks. They found that left-handed heterosexual participants had better face recognition abilities than left-handed homosexuals, and also outperformed right-handed heterosexuals.

Hand dominance is thought to be linked with both hemispheric functioning and sexual orientation; previous studies have shown that homosexual individuals are 39 per cent more likely to be left-handed.

鈥淥ur findings are consistent with what we know about the organization and laterality of how we process faces depending on our gender, sexual orientation and handedness,鈥� Steeves says.

Anatomical studies of the corpus callosum, which facilitates communication between the left and right hemispheres of the brain, also indicate differences in handedness: women and left-handed men have been shown to possess larger corpus callosum and more symmetrical cortices than right-handed men.

鈥淭hese anatomical differences likely contribute to the more lateralized performance results seen among right-handed and heterosexual men,鈥� says Steeves.

The study, 鈥淪ex differences in face processing are mediated by handedness and sexual orientation,鈥� was co-authored by 91亚色 psychology graduate student Caitlin R. Mullin, and 91亚色 undergraduate psychology students Paul W. H. Brewster, and Roxana A. Dobrin.

By Melissa Hughes, media relations officer.

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Fifteen students will offer summaries of their research. The students come to the program from different backgrounds, including聽computer science, psychology, biology, and kinesiology聽& health science.

"This day marks the culmination of two years of intense neuroscience studies for our first group of students," says Professor Doug Crawford (left), and the program鈥檚 coordinator. "They are a wonderful group and I am extremely proud of them"

Today鈥檚 presentations cover a wide range of approaches to neuroscience, ranging聽from research on molecular and cellular mechanisms in nerve cells and the relationship between the elements of neural systems, to the study of behaviour of whole organisms.

Psychology Professors Shayna Rosenbaum and Kari Hoffman have been hard at work coordinating the聽Neuroscience Research Day. 鈥淲e began a neuroscience graduate diploma program at 91亚色 in 2008. It combines the interests of the psychology, biology, and kinesiology聽& health sciences program,鈥� says Rosenbaum. 鈥淭his is the end of the second year of the program, which is a two-year consecutive program that is done in conjunction with the graduate students鈥� home department and their degree. [They are given a diploma in addition to their degree.] While the Neuroscience Research Day program is focused on the students, the event is also聽a celebration of the wide range of research interests among our neuroscience research faculty.鈥�

Above: The class of 2010 and neuroscience faculty

The graduating students聽will be聽presenting a range of projects, says Rosenbaum, that draw聽on different methodologies.聽Some students will be showcasing work done using a聽molecular approach, while others聽will be presenting research that looks at聽neuroscience from a systems focus. Other students, says Rosenbaum, have relied on neuroimaging methods and some have done their research with patient populations.聽The breadth of projects that will be presented during the research day, says Rosenbaum, mirrors the program faculty's聽multidisciplinary approach to neuroscience.

Left: Shayna Rosenbaum

The following is a snapshot of some of the 15 research projects that will be presented today:

David Cappadocia (BSc Spec. Hons. 鈥�08), is a second-year master's student聽working with Crawford. Cappadocia聽will present on聽his research into聽how the brain remembers different features of an object, so that when it is time to act on the object, it can be discriminated from other similar objects.

Caitlin Mullin (MSc 鈥�08), a PhD student, is studying how different parts of the brain form representations of the visual world around us. Mullin is聽using transcranial magnetic stimulation to apply a brief magnetic pulse to a specific part of the brain. This temporarily deactivates the brain region, allowing Mullin to determine how it functions. Mullin聽is supervised by 91亚色 psychology Professor Jennifer Steeves.

PhD student Krista Kelly will present her research that looks into the effects of losing one eye early in life. Specifically, Kelly is researching how that loss affects brain organization and聽visual ability. Working under the supervision of Steeves, Kelly is using聽functional brain imaging to correlate findings with聽behavioural measures of performance.

Master's students Javaneh Tamiji (BSc Spec. Hons. 鈥�08) and Shannon Lozinsky are working with聽kinesiology Professor Dorota Crawford. They聽will present their research on the聽causes of autism, a disorder of the brain. Using state-of-the-art equipment funded by the , Tamiji and Lozinsky聽are investigating how聽environmental agents, such as drugs taken during early pregnancy, affect function and communication of cells in the brain. The goal of their project is to聽achieve a聽better understanding of聽what is different or missing in the brains of individuals with autism.

91亚色 PhD student Debi Stransky (BSc Spec. Hons. 鈥�06, MSc 鈥�08) is investigating stereoscopic聽depth perception across a large range of depth offsets under the supervision of 91亚色 psychology Professor Laurie Wilcox. There is convincing evidence that there is a separate depth processing mechanism for images that cannot be fused into a single percept.聽Stransky is determining the quality of depth perceived from such stimuli and if these percepts are subserved from distinct neural mechanisms. Her work is funded聽by a postgraduate fellowship from the Natural Sciences & Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).

91亚色 PhD student Inna Tsirlin (BSc Spec. Hons. 鈥�04, MSc 鈥�06) is studying聽depth perceptions from monocular occlusions. These are regions in a scene that are visible to one eye, but not to the other because they are occluded, for instance by objects in the foreground. For many years this information was considered noise. Tsirlin's work has shown that monocular occlusions help define the boundaries between objects and backgrounds, and can even provide quantitative depth information. Tsirlin is working聽under the supervision of Wilcox and her work is funded by a postgraduate fellowship from NSERC.

Left: Kari Hoffman

PhD student Stephanie Hornyak, who specializes in clinical neuropsychology, is investigating how brain regions communicate with each other to support spatial memory of well-known environments learned long ago. Under the supervision of 91亚色 psychology Professor Shayna Rosenbaum, she has used an innovative method of combining functional MRI with multivariate statistics, which will help predict how brain networks may break down in patients who suffer from spatial disorientation.

91亚色 master鈥檚 student Adrian Bartlett (BA Spec. Hons. 鈥�08) is studying how the eye movements we use to scan the environment may shape the neural basis of object recognition. Using spectral analysis of neuronal population activity, his research has revealed that eye movements help coordinate the activity of neurons, leading to a stronger, more efficient code of what we鈥檙e viewing, Bartlett is the recipient of an NSERC Canada Graduate Scholarship and is supervised by psychology Professor Kari Hoffman.

鈥淎ll the research being presented is very exciting and it is also an important聽year because 91亚色 has acquired functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technology,鈥� says Rosenbaum.聽鈥淭he day聽also聽offers students another forum for networking and will help them build future collaborations.鈥�

Everyone in the University community is invited to attend the presentations. The deans of the , and Graduate Studies will also give presentations.

For more information, visit the Neuroscience Graduate Diploma Web site.

By Jenny Pitt-Clark, YFile editor

Republished courtesy of YFile鈥� 91亚色鈥檚 daily e-bulletin.

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