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Brain and Cognition Division
| Offices: | 531 Psychology Building 2147 Beckman Institute |
| Phone: | (217) 244-1118 |
| Fax: | (217) 244-8371 |
| Email: | dmbeck AT uiuc DOT edu |
| Websites: | |
At the most general level, my research program is aimed at identifying the cognitive processes and neural structures that enable and limit our visual representations of the world. For instance, I am interested in: what processes determine whether or not we are aware of a visual object or event, can report its presence, or can recall it later; what mechanisms constrain the number of items we can effectively process at the same time; and, how higher-level processes such as attention modulate activity in visual cortex. We use a variety of approaches to address these questions, including functional magnetic resonance imaging, behavioral methods, and transcranial magnetic stimulation.
Representative Publications:
- Beck, D. M. & Kastner, S. (2008). Top-down and bottom-up mechanisms in biasing competition in the human brain. Vision Research [Epub ahead of print]
- Torralbo, A. & Beck, D. M. (2008) Perceptual load-induced selection as a result of local competitive interactions in visual cortex. Psychological Science, 19, 1045-1050.
- Beck, D.M., Muggleton, N., Walsh, V., & Lavie, N. (2006). Right Parietal Cortex Plays a Critical Role in Change Blindness. Cerebral Cortex, 16, 712-17.
- Beck, D.M. and Lavie, N. (2005). Look here but ignore what you see: effects of distractors at fixation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 31, 592-607.
- Beck, D. M. & Kastner, S. (2005). Stimulus context modulates competition in human extrastriate cortex. Nature Neuroscience, 8, 1110-1116.
Classes Recently Taught:
- Psych 220 Images of Mind (Spring)
- Psych 593 Consciousness (Spring)
- Psych 453 Cognitive Neuroscience of Vision (Fall)