Institute of Neuroscience Faculty
Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology
B.S., 1986, Texas A&M University
Ph.D., 1992, UCLA
Research Interests
Neural basis of sensation and perceptual awareness; sensorimotor integration
The general goal of our research is to understand the brain's ability to perceive and interact with objects in the environment. In one line of research, we are attempting to define the patterns of brain activity that correspond to a subject's awareness of visual stimuli. In other words, why are we aware of some objects and events in the world around us, but not others? For these studies, we use behavioral methods and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine brain activation as human subjects observe illusory visual stimuli.
In a second line of research, we focus on the brain's ability to form spatial representations of the world using sensory cues. In particular, this research uses behavioral techniques to examine the many possible frames of reference used by the brain to map the location of an object in three-dimensional space. By assessing the performance of human subjects responding to sensory stimuli under various conditions, these experiments provide insights into the sensorimotor processes that allow us to accurately move the eyes or hands to the location of an object.
Representative Publications
- Schlag, J., Schlag-Rey, M. and Dassonville, P. (1990) Saccades can be aimed at the spatial location of targets flashed during pursuit. Journal of Neurophysiology 64:575-581.
- Dassonville, P., Schlag, J. and Schlag-Rey, M. (1992) Oculomotor localization relies on a damped representation of saccadic eye displacement in human and nonhuman primates. Visual Neuroscience 9:261-269.
- Dassonville, P., Schlag, J. and Schlag-Rey, M. (1992) The frontal eye field provides the goal of saccadic eye movement. Experimental Brain Research 89:300-310.
- Schlag-Rey, M., Schlag, J. and Dassonville, P. (1992) How the frontal eye field can impose a saccade goal on superior colliculus neurons. Journal of Neurophysiology 67:1003-1005.
- Dassonville, P., Schlag, J. and Schlag-Rey, M. (1995) The use of egocentric and exocentric location cues in saccadic programming. Vision Research 35: 2191-2199.
- Dassonville, P. (1995) Haptic localization and the internal representation of the hand in space. Experimental Brain Research 106:434-448.
- Dassonville, P., Zhu, X.-H., Ugurbil, K., Kim, S.-G. and Ashe, J. (1997) Functional activation of motor cortex reflects the direction and extent of handedness. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 94:14015-14018.
- Schlag, J., Dassonville, P. and Schlag-Rey, M. (1998) Interaction of the two frontal eye fields in monkey prior to saccade onset. Journal of Neurophysiology 79:64-72.
- Dassonville, P., Lewis, S.M., Zhu, X.-H., Ugurbil, K., Kim, S.-G. and Ashe, J. (1998) Effects of stimulus predictability on cortical motor activation. Neuroscience Research 32:65-74.
- Dassonville, P., Lewis, S.M., Foster, H.E. and Ashe, J. (1999) Choice and stimulus-response compatibility affect the duration of response selection. Cognitive Brain Research 7:235-240.
- Dassonville, P., Zhu, X.-H., Lewis, S.M., Kim, S.-G., Ugurbil, K. and Ashe, J. (2001) The effect of stimulus-response compatibility on cortical motor activation. NeuroImage 13:1-14.
- Dassonville, P., Bala, J.K. (2004) Are the original Roelofs effect and the induced Roelofs effect confounded by the same expansion of remembered space? Vision Research 44:1025-1029.
- Dassonville, P.*, Bridgeman, B.*, Bala, J.K., Thiem, P., Sampanes, A. (2004) The induced Roelofs effect: Two visual systems or the shift of a single reference frame? Vision Research 44:603-611. (*First two authors contributed equally.)
- Dassonville, P., Bala, J.K. (2004) Action, perception and the Roelofs effect: A mere illusion of dissociation. PLoS Biology 2(11):1936-1945.
- Walter, E., Dassonville, P. (in press) Semantic guidance of attention within natural scenes. Visual Cognition.