April 2021
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Zoom Colloquium: Visuomotor integration challenges in Autism Spectrum Disorder
Event Date:Abstract - Social use of gaze has long been a subject of interest in research on Autism Spectrum Disorder. However, a substantial body of work suggests that vision differences in ASD extend beyond social contexts to basic oculomotor control and visual information processing. Vision differences are observed clinically in ASD, but rarely addressed in early intervention for a number of reasons, leading to downstream consequences for motor skills and general ability. In this colloquium, we will discuss the potential mechanisms underlying visual system differences in ASD, their functional consequences, and potential avenues for assessment and intervention.
https://www.kines.umich.edu/directory/haylie-miller
Improving Zoom accessibility for people with hearing impairments People with hearing impairments often use lipreading and speechreading to improve speech comprehension. This approach is helpful but only works if the speaker’s face and mouth are clearly visible. For the benefit of people with hearing impairments on Zoom calls, please enable your device’s camera whenever you are speaking on Zoom, and face the camera while you speak. (Feel free to disable your camera when you aren’t speaking.)
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Zoom Brown Bag: Multisensory interactions in the primary visual and auditory cortex of humans: Evidence from source-imaged visual and auditory evoked potentials
Event Date:Abstract - Our environment is multisensory; at any given time, information can be received through multiple senses. While it was previously believed that multisensory processing in the cortex was restricted to higher-order regions, there is now evidence to suggest that multisensory interactions may occur as early as in primary sensory regions (Kayser et al., 2009; Murray et al., 2016). For instance, both the primary visual and auditory cortex exhibit crossmodal sensitivity (Calvert et al., 1997; Brang et al., 2015) and direct connections between both regions have been reported (Beer et al., 2011, 2013). However, whether multisensory inputs actually converge in sensory regions of the cortex remains unclear. In this brown bag, I will present results from a study where we used source-imaged steady-state visual and auditory evoked potentials to address this open question. The goal of the study was to determine whether the primary visual and auditory cortex respond to crossmodal sensory stimulation and are locations of early multisensory input convergence in the cortex. We used a frequency-tagged approach in which a visual (FV) and auditory (FA) stimulus were presented at distinct modulation frequencies, either alone or concurrently. Significant responses at the harmonic frequencies of the visual (nFV) and auditory stimulus (nFA) were localized in both the primary visual and auditory cortex, even when the stimulus was presented alone. Moreover, significant responses at intermodulation (IM) frequencies (FV±FA), reflecting the convergence of visual and auditory inputs, were also observed and localized to these regions when the visual and auditory stimuli were presented concurrently. Overall, our results demonstrate that the visual and auditory cortex are multisensory: both regions respond to crossmodal stimulation and are cortical locations of multisensory signal convergence. https://www.ski.org/users/audrey-wong-kee-you
Improving Zoom accessibility for people with hearing impairments People with hearing impairments often use lipreading and speechreading to improve speech comprehension. This approach is helpful but only works if the speaker’s face and mouth are clearly visible. For the benefit of people with hearing impairments on Zoom calls, please enable your device’s camera whenever you are speaking on Zoom, and face the camera while you speak. (Feel free to disable your camera when you aren’t speaking.)
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Zoom Colloquium: Harnessing Augmented Reality to Assist People who are Blind with Orientation and Mobility
Event Date:Abstract - Smartphones have been a massive boon for people who are blind in terms of their ability to access physical environments. For instance, GPS navigation apps and ride-sharing apps have enabled people who are blind to independently, efficiently, and confidently travel, including places they have never been to before. Despite this progress, there remain situations that are difficult for blind people to navigate. In particular, navigating through unfamiliar indoor environments presents a substantial challenge.
In this talk, I will present the work that my group is doing to try to improve the accessibility of indoor environments using smartphone technology. In particular, I will discuss my group's work, both in the lab and in the field, on harnessing augmented reality technology to perform tasks such as navigation, mapping, and route recording. Lastly, I'll present some of our successes and also discuss ongoing and future work. https://www.olin.edu/faculty/profile/paul-ruvolo/
Improving Zoom accessibility for people with hearing impairments People with hearing impairments often use lipreading and speechreading to improve speech comprehension. This approach is helpful but only works if the speaker’s face and mouth are clearly visible. For the benefit of people with hearing impairments on Zoom calls, please enable your device’s camera whenever you are speaking on Zoom, and face the camera while you speak. (Feel free to disable your camera when you aren’t speaking.)
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Zoom Colloquium: The visual white matter: Its structural organization and relation to perception, development, and disease
Event Date:Abstract - Humans rely extensively on their visual system for tasks such as navigation, communication, and social interaction. Loss or damage to vision can have a profound effect on the quality of life. Wheres half of the total brain volume is composed of axons wrapped in myelin sheaths, the majority of visual neuroscience research has focused on neurons, brain areas, and synapses. I will discuss research that advances our understanding of how the visual white matter – the network of connections wrapped in myelin between visual areas– is organized, how it relates to attention, human development, and how it is affected by eye disease. The research presented in this talk was developed using the BRAIN initiative-funded open-access, free cloud computing platform brainlife.io. The platform is meant to lower the barriers of entry to complex, advanced computational methods from data validation, analysis, and visualization to understand vision, brain structure, and function using neuroimaging data. https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/psychology/faculty/fp4834
Improving Zoom accessibility for people with hearing impairments People with hearing impairments often use lipreading and speechreading to improve speech comprehension. This approach is helpful but only works if the speaker’s face and mouth are clearly visible. For the benefit of people with hearing impairments on Zoom calls, please enable your device’s camera whenever you are speaking on Zoom, and face the camera while you speak. (Feel free to disable your camera when you aren’t speaking.)
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Zoom Colloquium: ACTION AUDIO: Accessible Sports Broadcasting
Event Date:Abstract - Billions of people in the world watch sport media broadcasts to follow their favorite sports, e.g., tennis, soccer, cricket, golf, or Olympic games. They enjoy the actions captured by cameras and microphones on and around the fields. They also socially engage with other fans at home, at a local club, in a stadium and on social media.
However, if you are blind or have low-vision (BLV), your overall experience is limited. While TV is providing the state-of-the-art experience for sighted people, BLV need to tune in to radio broadcasts. Although used widely by BLV, radio cannot provide all the actions in real time, in particular the movement of the objects such as the ball, puck, and players, ball kids, referees etc.
Action Audio aims to provide frameworks that will make sport media broadcasting accessible to BLV. It provides alternative modalities and allow BLV access all the actions on sports broadcasting. It will also create technologies that let people experience the events live in sport venues. https://research.monash.edu/en/persons/cagatay-goncu https://www.action-audio.com/
Improving Zoom accessibility for people with hearing impairments People with hearing impairments often use lipreading and speechreading to improve speech comprehension. This approach is helpful, but only works if the speaker’s face and mouth are clearly visible. For the benefit of people with hearing impairments on Zoom calls, please enable your device’s camera whenever you are speaking on Zoom, and face the camera while you speak. (Feel free to disable your camera when you aren’t speaking.)
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Zoom Colloquium: Deficits beyond visual acuity in amblyopia
Event Date:Abstract - There is growing evidence that the clinical emphasis on visual acuity in both the diagnosis and the treatment of amblyopia is not sufficient. My research has focused on deficits in motion perception that are present in fellow eyes that have normal visual acuity and also in amblyopic eyes that show improved visual acuity following treatment. Deficits in motion perception occur in several developmental disorders, and they are commonly attributed to vulnerability in the dorsal visual stream. Amblyopia, however, is not a clear example of dorsal stream vulnerability because the motion deficits are most evident at slow speeds that activate regions of both ventral and dorsal visual cortex, and the well-documented spatial vision deficits involve the ventral stream. In addition to uncertain neural correlates, the real-world functional impact of deficits on computer-generated psychophysical measures of 2-dimensional motion sensitivity is not known. To address these issues, my research on amblyopia has expanded to include assessments of reading and visuomotor skills, which have more obvious functional impact and have been attributed to the functioning of the dorsal visual stream. In this talk, I will present recent data showing binocular deficits on specific components of reading ability and visually-guided reaching in children with amblyopia. Interestingly, performance on these tasks shows significant associations with stereopsis and/or motion perception. http://www.giaschilab.ca
Improving Zoom accessibility for people with hearing impairments People with hearing impairments often use lipreading and speechreading to improve speech comprehension. This approach is helpful but only works if the speaker’s face and mouth are clearly visible. For the benefit of people with hearing impairments on Zoom calls, please enable your device’s camera whenever you are speaking on Zoom, and face the camera while you speak. (Feel free to disable your camera when you aren’t speaking.)
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