franw@yorku.ca
Professor, Department of Psychology
Faculty of Health, York University
4700 Keele St, Toronto Ont M3J 1P3
Phone: 416-736-2100 ext 33184
Office: Computer Science and Engineering (CSEB) - 1012D
Laboratory: Computer Science & Engineering Building Room 006 ext 70111
Courses:
- Seminar in Health Psychology (HH/ PSYC 4190)
- This course will not be given in 2009-10.
- Introductory Psychology PSYC 1010C (Correspondence)
- Frequently asked questions about this course - read this if you plan to register for 2009-10
- Moodle Website for Fall/Winter 2009-10 - coming soon!
- Graduate Seminar in Vision Health and Visual Disability
Research Interests:
Migraine headache affects approximately 3 million Canadians. Many migraine sufferers are very light-sensitive, and experience visual auras at the onset of their migraine episodes. Migraine research in my laboratory addresses two fundamental issues:
1) Migraine Aura: what is the mechanism underlying migraine auras, what is their locus within the visual system, and what is it about the structural and functional organization of the visual system that makes it prone to this sort of hallucinatory activity. Auras have been attributed to cortical spreading depression within V1 - we are currently testing predictions of that hypothesis. Our studies involve having subjects make structured observations of their auras as they are in progress.
2) Visual hypersensitivity in Migraine: Are the visual systems of migraineurs abnormal in ways that are measurable using psychophysical techniques during the period between episodes? How can this hypersensitivity be characterized? Are particular aspects of vision affected more than others? We are currently examing a wide range of psychophysical measures of contrast and motion perception. We are also interested in whether light acts as a stressor in autonomic terms in migraineurs.
Click here to see recent publications on this topic
Intermediate Level Form Vision
Over the past several years, studies in my laboratory have focused on understanding the intermediate levels of visual form analysis. We use psychophysical and computational approaches to ask how visual information, initially extracted from the image by the early filtering operations of the retina and V1 are combined to reveal basic information about object shape. Much of this work has been carried out using novel stimulus sets of radial frequency patterns and Glass patterns. We are currently pursuing related studies using fMRI imaging to observe the function of the ventral visual pathway in vivo in human subjects.
Radial Frequency Pattern Concentric Glass Pattern
Face Perception
Of all the objects humans recognize by sight, faces are the most complex and yet in many ways the most important. Social interaction depends on recognition of conspecifics and on decoding the ongoing stream of information conveyed by facial expression that accompanies speech. Our research builds on our ongoing work on intermediate level form perception to address questions about how information about facial properties is combined configurally by the visual system, and how it is used for different purposes (individual recognition, detecting direction of gaze, gender identification etc).
Vision and Aging
With the current demographics in much of the western world, understanding age-related changes to our sensory and perceptual systems is increasingly important. We are currently investigating a number of the intermediate and high level visual functions described above in an older population of healthy adults.
Recent Publications:
Form Vision
Wilson, H.R., Wilkinson, F. & Assad, W. (1997) Concentric orientation sumation in human form vision. Vision Research, 37, 2325-2330.
Wilkinson, F., Wilson, H.R. & Habak, C. (1998) Detection and recognition of radial frequency patterns. Vision Research , 38, 3555-3568.
Wilson, H.R., Krupa, B. & Wilkinson, F.(2000) Dynamics of inhibition-induced oscillations in form vision. Nature Neuroscience, 3, 170-176.
Wilkinson, F. , James, T.W., Wilson, H.R., Gati, J.S., Menon, R.S. & Goodale, M.S. (2000) An fMRI study of the selective activation of human extrastriate form vision areas by radial and concentric gratings. Current Biology, 10, 455-58.
Wilson, H. R., Loffler, G., Wilkinson, F. and Thistlethwaite, W. A. (2001) An inverse oblique effect in human vision Vision Research, , 41, 1749-1753
Lewis, T.L., Ellemberg, D., Maurer, D., Wilkinson, F., Wilson, H.R., Dirks, M. & Brent, H.P.(2002) Sensitivity to Global Form in Glass Patterns after Early Visual Deprivation in Humans. Accepted for publication in Vision Research, 42, 939-948 .
Loffler, G., Wilson, H.R. & Wilkinson, F.(2003) Local and global contributions to shape discrimination. Vision Research, 43, 519-530
Wilson, H. R. & Wilkinson, F. (2003) Further evidence for global orientation processing in circular Glass patterns. Vision Res. 43, 563-564.
Lewis, T.L., Ellemberg, D., Maurer, D., Dirks, M., Wilkinson, F. & Wilson, H.R. (2004) A Window on the Normal Development of Sensitivity to Global Form in Glass Patterns. Perception, 33, 409-418.
Steeves, J.K.E., Wilkinson, F., González, E.G., Wilson, H.R., & Steinbach, M.J. (2004) Global shape discrimination at reduced contrasts in enucleated observers. Vision Research, 44, 943-949.
Habak, C., Wilkinson, F., Zakher, B. & Wilson, H. R. (2004) Curvature population coding for complex shapes in human vision. Vision Res. 44, 2815-2823.
Wilson, H. R. & Wilkinson, F. (2004) Spatial channels in vision & spatial pooling. In The Visual Neurosciences, L. M. Chalupa & J. S. Werner (Eds), MIT Press: Cambridge, MA.
Habak, C., Wilkinson, F. & Wilson, H.R,. (2006) Dynamics of shape interaction in human vision. Vision Research. 46(26), 4305-20
Anderson, N.D., Habak, C., Wilkinson, F., & Wilson, H.R. (2007) Evaluating shape aftereffects with radial frequency patterns. Vision Research, 47(3), 298-308.
Bell J, Badcock DR, Wilson H, Wilkinson F. (2007) Detection of shape in radial frequency contours: independence of local and global form information. Vision Research, 47(11), 1518-22.
Face Perception
Wilson, H. R., Loffler, G. & Wilkinson, F. (2002) Synthetic faces, face cubes, and the geometry of face space. Vision Research, 42, 2909-2923.
Loffler, G., Gordon, G.E., Wilkinson, F., Goren, D. & Wilson, H.R. (2005) Configural masking of faces: evidence for high-level interactions in face perception. Vision Research, 45, 2287-2297.
Loffler, G., Yourganov, G., Wilkinson, F, & Wilson, H,R, (2005) fMRI evidence for the neural representation of faces. Nature Neuroscience, 8, 1386-1391.
Migraine:
Wilkinson, F., Crotogino, J. (2000) Orientation discrimination thresholds in migraine: a measure of visual cortical inhibition. Cephalalgia,, 20, 57-66.
McColl, S.L. & Wilkinson, F. (2000) Visual contrast gain controls in migraine: Measures of visual cortical excitability and inhibition. Cephalalgia., 20, 74-84.
Crotogino, J., Wilkinson, F. & Feindel, A. (2001) Perceived flicker frequency of scintillating migraine auras. Headache, 41, 40-49.
Wilkinson, F. (2001) Migraine, eating disorders and triptans: an unrecognized risk? Headache (letter to the editor). Headache, 41, 914-915.
Wilkinson, F. (2004) Migraine auras and other hallucinations: windows on the visual system. In Roots of Visual Awareness, D.Milner & C. Haywood (Eds), Progress in Brain Research 144: 305-320
Wilkinson, F., Karanovic, O., Ross, E.C., Lillakas, L. & Steinbach, M.S.. (2006) Ocular motor function in migraine with and without aura. Cephalalgia, 26, 660-671.
Aurora, S. & Wilkinson, F. (2007) The brain is hyperexcitable in migraine. Headache Currents, Cephalalgia, 27, 1442-53.
Wilkinson, F., Karanovic, O. & Wilson, H.R. (2008) Binocular rivalry in migraine. Cephalalgia, 28, 1327-1338.
Aging:
Habak, C., Wilkinson, F. & Wilson, H.R, (2008) Aging disrupts the neural transformations that link variations in face view, Vision Research 48:9-15 (Epub 2007 Dec 4).
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