My research training started in Australia when I worked on synaesthesia and cross-modality attention during my PhD. Very quickly I realised synaesthesia is not just a pure perceptual phenomenon, but a compound of semantic concepts and high-level perception. This led me to move to the UK and begin working with many neurolinguistics researchers on the neural basis of semantic meaning, language, and memory. The more I understand about the brain's language/memory systems, the more I realise the importance of taking a holistic view when studying different functional networks (e.g., the visual system, the language system, the executive-control system, etc.) as interconnected components of a macroscale biological system (yet having free will). This understanding inspired my interest in the connectome literature and led me to collaborate with connectome researchers to investigate the status of the semantic/language system in the connectomic architecture. My new and old research can be grouped into 4 inter-related themes:
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How does knowledge
influence what we see? Recognising visual input is a 2-way process - what we see feeds into what we know & what we know affects how we see. This mutual influence straddles between visual perception and abstract cognition, built on both feed-forward sweep (sensory input) and feedback modulation (prior knowledge). To investigate these mutual effects, I leverage psychophysical methods, non-invasive brain stimulation, and functional fMRI to investigate this bidirectional interplay. My research are published in:
Chiou & Lambon Ralph (2018, NeuroImage) Chiou & Lambon Ralph (2016, J. of Neurosci.) Chiou & Lambon Ralph (2016, Cortex) Chiou et al. (2014, JoCN) |
How does the brain
represent knowledge? Where and how conceptual knowledge is encoded in the brain have long been contentious topics. Scientists particularly debate over whether concepts are encoded as a distributed pattern across the cortex or encoded within a single, localised region. There are also controversies about how the brain selectively retrieves certain aspects of concepts while ignoring or suppressing other conceptual aspects. To investigate these issues, I use neuroimaging and various connectivity and info-decoding analysis. Findings have been reported in:
Chiou et al. 2023 (Trends in Cognitive Science) Chiou, Jefferies, et al. (2022, Cerebral Cortex) Chiou, Cox, et al. (2022, Cerebral Cortex) Chiou et al. (2020, Cerebral Cortex) Chiou & Lambon Ralph (2019, NeuroImage) Chiou et al. (2018, Cortex) |
How does knowledge shape
multisensory perception? The brain is constantly inundated by massive amount of messages from different senses, and it learns to integrate them. In this line of research, I study how the brain underpins the 'normal' type of multisensory integration that every healthy brain has, as well as the 'unusual' type of integration in synaesthesia. I aim to elucidate the role of conceptual knowledge in cross-modality interactions in both synaesthetic and neurotypical populations. Findings have been reported in:
Chiou et al. (2018, Cognition) Chiou & Rich (2015, Perception) Chiou & Rich (2014, Frontiers of Psy.) Chiou et al. (2013, Cortex) Chiou & Rich (2012, Perception) |
How do cognitive functions emerge as a results of brain connectivity? I have been intrigued by this question for nearly a decade. I first started contemplating the relationship between connectivity and function when I read Talia Konkle's resting-state paper in which she studied how long-range connectivity with distant regions leads to the emergence of category-specific patches in the visual cortex (small-size area, large-size area, animal area, etc.). The relationship between connectivity and a brain region's functional tuning can also be explained by specifying this region's locus in a macroscale connectivity gradient. Daniel Margulies's 2016 paper on cortical gradient provides very cool evidence on the relationship between cognitive function, connectivity pattern, and spatial topography on the cortical sheet. Currently in Surrey I focus on this line of investigation. Welcome to email me if you have any question about my research. |