Get Involved
If you are interested in vision science or want to learn more about low vision and blindness, there are many opportunities to get involved at The Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute.
Work in this laboratory is devoted to researching facts and developing tools to help the rehabilitation of people with low vision, especially those with macular vision loss.
We developed software to make the retinal placement of stimuli during micro-perimetry by a scanning laser ophthalmoscope (SLO) independent of involuntary fixational eye movements. This greatly increases the accuracy of the measurement and enhances the ability to reliably repeat a measurement on the same patient, as well as making comparisons between patients.
Reference
MacKeben M & Gofen A. (2007) Gaze-contingent display for retinal function testing by scanning laser ophthalmoscope. J Opt Soc America A, vol. 24/5, May, pp. 1402-1410 (feature issue on “Retinal Imaging”)
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We investigated whether relative motion can serve as a cue for sustained attention. We found that relative motion perception has a long latency and that it can indeed attract attention to improve discrimination performance.
Reference
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Poggel DA, Strasburger H, MacKeben M. (2007) Cueing attention by relative motion in the periphery of the visual field. Perception 36(7) 955 - 970. (pubmed)
We studied letter recognition in 8 deg eccentricity from the fovea after attracting sustained focal attention to the stimulated location by a cue. Young and elderly healthy subjects, as well as patients with central vision loss participated. We found that the ability to utilize focal attention has an irregular topographic component in some subjects. The experiments in patients indicated that locations with high attentional potential are more likely to be used as preferred retinal loci after central vision loss.
References
MacKeben, M. (1999) Sustained Focal Attention and Peripheral Letter…
Typographical features of letters were manipulated in such a way that frequently occurring letter confusions in eccentric viewing happened less frequently. This demonstrated that a combination of psychophysics and goal-directed modification of typographic features is a viable experimental strategy.
Reference
MacKeben M. (2000) Enhancement of peripheral letter recognition by typographical features. Visual Impairment Research 2, (2) 95 -103. (link to VIR)
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If you are interested in vision science or want to learn more about low vision and blindness, there are many opportunities to get involved at The Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute.