Research questions
With the visual modality as a model system and focusing on the the question of overlap and uniqueness of perception and memory processes, the main research questions are: When, and possibly where, are visual perceptual representations transformed to memory representations, and to what degree does retrieval of information from visual memory involve regeneration of on-line visual processes?
A cross-discipline approach
The research strategy combines the experimental techniques of cognitive psychology with functional brain imaging (fMRI). The guiding hypothesis is that retrieval from memory involves reinstatement of processes active in the original perception of the event, including recruitment of activity in early visual brain areas and the re-enactment of sensorimotor programs. To bring memory research in line with perception research, memory is assessed in terms of the quality of storage rather than the conventional quantity estimates, and experimental techniques are adopted from vision research, such as delayed discrimination and eye movement recording, with several novel methodological modifications. The project holds the promise of significantly changing our ideas about visual memory and, perhaps, human memory in general.
Publications
Laeng, B., Ørbo, M., Holmlund, T., & Miozzo, M. (in press). Pupillary Stroop effects.
Cognitive Processing.
Laeng, B., Okubo, M., Saneyoshi, A., & Michimata, C. (in press). Processing spatial relations
with different apertures of attention. Cognitive Science.
Stylianou-Korsnes, M., Reiner, M., Magnussen, S. & Feldman, M.W. (2010) visual recognition of shapes and textures: an fMRI study. Brain Structure and Function, in press.
Okubo, M., Laeng, B., Saneyoshi, A., & Michimata, C. (2010). Exogenous attention differentially modulates the processing of categorical and coordinate spatial relations. Acta Psychologica, 135, 1-11.
Hellige, J., Laeng, B., & Michimata, C. (2010). Processing asymmetries in the visual system.
In K. Hugdahl and R. Westerhausen (editors), The two halves of the brain: Information processing in the cerebral hemispheres, pp.379-415. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Vogt, S. E. & Magnussen, S. (2010). Eye movements, memory and visual expertise. In M. Greenlee, C. Wagner & C. Wolff (Eds). Aisthesis. Wahrnehmungsprozesse und Visualisierungsformen in Kunst undTechnik. Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner Verlag, 2009 (Regensburger Studien zur Kunstgeschichte; Bd. 12), in press.
Magnussen, S. (2009). Implicit visual working memory Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 50, 535-542.
Magnussen, S., Greenlee, M.W., Baumann, O. & Endestad, T. (2009). Visual perceptual memory – anno 2008. In L. Bäckman & L. Nyberg (Eds). Memory, aging and the brain (pp. 53-75) Hove, UK: Psychology Press.
Baumann, O., Endestad, T., Magnussen, S. & Greenlee, M.W. (2008) Delayed discrimination of spatial frequency for gratings of different orientation: Behavioral and fMRI evidence for low-level perceptual memory stores in early visual cortex. Experimental Brain Research, 188, 363-369.
Rothmayr, C., Baumann, O., Endestad, T., Rutschmann, R.M., Magnussen, S. & Greenlee, M.W. (2007). Dissociation of neural correlates of verbal and non-verbal visual working memory with different delays. Behavioral and Brain Function, 3, 56, ( doi:10.1186/1744-9081-3-56).
Vogt, S.E. & Magnussen, S. (2007). Expertise in pictorial perception: Eye movement patterns and visual memory in artists and laymen. Perception, 36, 91-100.
Vogt, S.E. & Magnussen, S. (2007). Long-term memory for 400 pictures on a common theme. Experimental Psychology, 54, 298-303.
Laeng, B., Waterloo, K., Johnsen, S.H., Bakke, S.J., Låg, T., Simonsen, S.S., & Høgsæt, J.
(2007). The eyes remember it: Oculography and pupillometry during recollection in three
amnesic patients. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 19:11, 1888-1904.
Laeng, B., Øvervoll, M., & Steinsvik, O.O. (2007). Remembering 1500 pictures: The right
hemisphere remembers better than the left. Brain & Cognition, 63, 105-113.
Spillmann, L., Otte, T., Hamburger, K. & Magnussen, S. (2006). Perceptual filling-in from the edge of the blind spot. Vision Research, 46, 4252-4257.
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