Michael Proulx

"What does it mean, to see?" My primary interest in psychology, neuroscience, and computer science is cognition. My research has advanced from first examining cognition and attentional control within the visual system to now examine how multisensory processing contributes to perception and cognition. Working with blind individuals in particular helps to reveal the role of visual experience for cognition and how the "visual" parts of the brain process other information in the absence of visual input. Much of this work has used a 'sensory-substitution' device (called The vOICe) that provides visual information by translating visual input into sound. I therefore study multiple sensory modalities and utilize multiple methods to best understand the psychological and neural underpinnings of cognition in human and non-human animals. Other current projects include virtual reality (VR), the rubber hand illusion, visual decision-making in zebrafish and bees, perceptual learning, spatial cognition, numerical representation, semantic memory, cognitive evolution, synaesthesia, neurostimulation, crossmodal collaboration, and sensory substitution.