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Charest Lab

Our mission is to investigate representational idiosyncrasies using visual objects. On this site, you can discover more about us and our work.

CHBH
UoB
European Research Council

About

The Charest lab at the University of Birmingham uses visual objects as a proxy to study aspects of cognition such as perception, consciousness, memory, and decision making.

We use neuroimaging techniques such as functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and Magneto-Electroencephalography(M-EEG), combined with psychophysical experiments of vision to investigate the brain mechanisms behind these cognitive processes, with a focus on honouring individual representational idiosyncrasies. We also use deep convolutional neuronal networks to further characterise cognition and the brain.

Team

  • Dr. Ian Charest
    Senior Lecturer
    Programme Leader
    Research: Cognitive neuroscience

  • Dr. Jasper van den Bosch
    Postdoctoral Scientist
    Research: Cognitive neuroscience
    web-dev, and Methods

  • Dr. Ludwig Barbaro
    Postdoctoral Scientist
    Research: Cognitive neuroscience
    conscious access

  • Dr. Sara Assecondi
    Postdoctoral Scientist
    Research: Cognitive neuroscience
    and Methods

  • Daniel Lindh
    PhD Candidate
    Research: Cognitive Neuroscience
    conscious access

  • Simon Faghel-Soubeyrand
    PhD Candidate
    Research: Cognitive Neuroscience
    visual features in object recognition

  • Christina Dimitriadou
    PhD Candidate
    Research: Cognitive Neuroscience
    conscious access

  • Yifan Xu
    PhD Candidate
    Research: Cognitive Neuroscience
    emotions

  • Eva Bamps
    MSc Candidate
    Research: Cognitive Neuroscience
    expertise

  • Lara Oliel
    MSc Candidate
    Research: Cognitive Neuroscience
    conscious access

  • Katerina Simkova
    Research Assistant
    Research: Cognitive Neuroscience
    conscious access

News

May 2019 - The lab attended VSS 2019.

We presented our latest work via posters, and talks. If you didn't make it to VSS, and would like to check out what we presented, see this GitHub Repo

May 2019 - Lara joins the lab!

The lab is happy to welcome Lara Oliel. Lara is currently completing a Masters degree in Integrative Biology and Physiology at the Sorbonne University Pierre and Marie Curie Campus. She joins the lab to gain experience in cognitive neuroscience and will help with various current projects.

January 2019 - Yifan joins the lab!

The lab is happy to welcome Yifan Xu, who is joining to work on the neurocognitive mechanisms of emotion recognition.

November 2018 - Christina joins the lab!

The lab is happy to welcome Christina Dimitriadou. Christina will work on collecting an important multimodal dataset with several cognitive tasks in EEG, fMRI, and behaviour.

Current projects and collaborations

Individual differences in brain representations

Everyone is unique, and one challenge of brain imaging is to develop new tools to better understand brain function in individual people.
Pattern across subjects Pattern across stimuli Pattern across voxels
Honoring the unique response of each individual brain, in each cortical patch or column to each particular stimulus.
Early neuroimaging studies have focusses on analyses or regional-mean activation, averaging across voxels within a region of interest (e.g. a face region), across stimuli within a given category (e.g. a individual faces), and across individual subjects (black circle above). The field has begun to honour these distinctions, by analysing patterns of activity within each region, responses to single exemplar images, and the variation across individuals. However, only recently have all these components of progress been combined (red circle) in a single study.
Click here to read our paper.

Contact us

School of Psychology
College of Life & Environmental Sciences
Hills Building
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston, Birmingham
B15 2TT


i.charest@bham.ac.uk