CogNovo research fellow Mihaela Taranu is presenting the talk "Searching for the role of parietal cortex in visual and auditory multi-stability" at the 20th annual meeting of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness (ASSC20) on 15 Jun 2016 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her talk summarises results from a study she did at The University of Edinburgh in the lab of David Carmel. The research is part of her PhD project "Individual differences in visual and auditory bistability" at CogNovo.
There is an increasing interest in investigating the commonalities and separabilities between visual and auditory bi or multstable perception. One potential brain area involved in both visual and auditory perceptual switching is the parietal cortex. Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) can ascertain whether the role of parietal cortex plays a causal role in the perceptual switching. In this talk, I present results which do not confirm our hypothesis that applying TMS over superior parietal cortex influences significantly how participants respond to visual and auditory mulltistable paradigms. Many questions are raised and answers are sought.
The ASSC-20 is an exciting 5-days conference which brings together leading researchers in neuroscience, psychology, cognitive science, philosophy, psychiatry, neurology, and computer science. This forum is dedicated to showcasing and advancing rigorous scientific approaches to understanding the nature, function, and underlying mechanisms of conscious experience.