The Faculty of Elective module in the training programme for researchers

COGNITIVE OF VISUAL

Responsible : Bruno Laeng

Study points : 3

Prerequisite : Admittance to the PhD program in psychology, or any other PhD programme

Teaching and Examination Term : Spring 2008

Purpose : The course is an elective for the PhD-degree in Psychology. The course can be of interest for students from other PhD Programmes at the university.

Content of the course: The course will focus on problems concerning visual attention from the empirical viewpoint of cognitive neuroscience. Recent years have seen an exponential increase in interest in the topic, which was central at the beginnings of psychology, and it may well be the most popular theme of research within the current cognitive sciences and . The course will focus on approaches from cognitive psychology, neuropsychology (both clinical and experimental) as well as psychophysiology (EEG, pupillometry) and imaging (PET and fMRI). Specific themes will be: 1) attention as limited capacity (perceptual load); 2) the relationship between attention and executive functions; 3) the relationship between consciousness and attention; 4) how to characterize the “focus” of attention (the scope and shape of the focus, multiple foci, and attentional tracking; space-based versus object-based attention; attentional selection of spatial frequency information and of local versus global feature); 5) gaze control and overt attention; 6) the pathology, or near-pathology, of attention (neglect, ADHD; effects of aging, sleepiness); 7) attentional expertise (training attention; meditational techniques).

Teaching : Lecures, seminars and student presentations

Responsible teacher: Bruno Laeng

Language : The course is taught in English

Curriculum : Laurent Itti, , and John K. Tsotos (2005). Neurobiology of attention . Amsterdam, Holland: Elsevier. Chosen chapters In addition, a list of relevant articles will be posted on-line (as PDFs) on the course’s homepage. The list is relevant for deepening some topics and will be used for selecting specific articles for students’ presentations during the course.

Course requirement: Students’ presentations on topic from course readings. Presentations will be evaluated as approved/not approved.

Exam : Home paper (max 30 pages) on a topic relevant to the course and agreed in advance between the instructor and each student. A Pass/Fail grade is awarded.