Laurier Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience

About the Centre

Cognitive neuroscience combines cognitive psychology, neuroscience and technology to study the brain mechanisms behind thought and cognition. The Laurier Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience is one of Canada’s premier centres in this area of research.

The Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience includes five laboratories, each devoted to a different research area:

• attention
• language and cognition
• memory
• perception
• speech and communication

Through the centre, the expertise of these laboratories and researchers combine to answer questions that virtually all of neuroscience seeks to answer: how multiple perceptual streams are integrated and then translated into meaningful actions.

Although each scientist brings a unique research strength to the centre, there are many complementary research themes that facilitate collaboration. The centre employs multiple techniques to undertake finding answers to research questions. This allows centre members to overcome limitations inherent in any one method and provides an unique environment for graduate students to learn from the expertise of a core of faculty with diverse expertise.

Members’ Research Interests

• Todd Ferretti, PhD: Language and cognitive processes; computational models of language processing; electro–physiological studies of language comprehension and production.
• William Hockley, PhD: Human memory and attention, recognition decision processes; contributions of familiarity and recollection to memory performance.
• Jeffery A. Jones, PhD: Psychological and neural processes that guide all forms of human social interaction. Sensory-motor control during speech, singing, and music production. Applied work looks at communication disorders, biomarkers for brain disorders, and ways to apply social and cognitive neuroscience to business and marketing. Techniques used include behavioural measures, EEG, and fMRI.
• Elizabeth Olds, PhD: Human selective attention, visual search, and visual object recognition.
• Philip Servos, PhD: The neural bases of somatosensory and visual perception.

Research Facilities

In addition to housing well-known researchers, the labs boast state-of-the-art technology. They include equipment such as eye-tracking devices, and high-density EEG and ERP acquisition hardware and software. In addition, hardware and software onsite makes it possible to integrate the data collected at local fMRI research facilities in the same research participant to address multiple questions more effectively and comprehensively.