I have studied the neural mechanisms underlying the process leading from only partly visible edges to the outline, for example, of an object.
To understand, how our visual system uses physical information reaching it through the eye, I used psychophysical and physiological techniques. The first target human or primate perception and allow to understand basic principles of the processes leading to a certain percept, such as a line. The second allows to directly study the neuronal processes related to that percept.
This research was conducted in the lab of Anna Roe

Research on Tactile and Nociceptive Processing
Currently, I study the cortical mechanisms underlying the first stages of touch and pain processing. As in vision, the earliest cortical processes are largely reproducing the physical structure of a stimulus such as location of an indentation on a fingertip, or intensity of a temperature change. Interaction between different cortical areas or domains creates a more complex pattern that resembles more closely our percepts. We measure cortical activity using primarily fMRI to find which structures and areas are involved in representing the physical aspects of somatosensory and nociceptive stimuli, and how touch and pain processing overlap and integrate.
This research is conducted in the lab of Limin Chen

This example shows an illusory contour of the "abutting line" type. Dependent on the cues contained in the image, one perceives a zigzag-line separating two striped areas in the same depth plane.

Here, you might even see a striped object, a face, in front of a striped background. Out of nothing but stripes, your brain creates a meaningful image for you to see.


Illusory contours like this might be a vital part of our everyday visual experience!

We (Barbara Dillenburger, Lillian Gu, & Anna W. Roe) developed a novel, dynamically induced illusory contour stimulus
See the stimulus,
or download our poster from VSS 2006 about the 'pure IC'!