Lynn Robertson

Adjunct Professor (Psychology)

Email: lynnrob@berkeley.edu

Research areas: Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience

Interests focus on human cognitive neuroscience combining studies using chronometry (timing) with neuroanatomical and functional data. We study neurological and psychiatric patients with selected attentional and visual short term memory disorders in attempting to understand how the brain represents and attends to objects and space. One major focus is on hemispheric differences in attending to visual primitives (e.g., contour, spatial location, spatial scale, etc.), which have relevance for representational systems for objects and space and their interactions with attentional mechanisms. Another major focus is on processing of objects and space above and below the level of awareness. Patients with neuropsychological deficits such as unilateral hemineglect and Balint's syndrome are combined with cognitive studies in normal populations. We also study developmental perceptual disorders such as face blindness (congenital prosopagnosia) and seek the neurobiological basis for such disorders through functional imaging of people born with the problem and studies of patients with acquired face blindness (e.g., through stroke).

Selected Publications

Robertson, L.C. and Ivry, R. 2000. Hemispheric asymmetry: Attention to visual and auditory primitives Current Directions in Psychological Science 9: 59-63.

Robertson, L.C. 2003. Binding, spatial attention and perceptual awareness Nature Reviews Neuroscience 4: 93-102.

Robertson, L.C., Treisman, A., Friedman-Hill, S. and Grabowecky, M. 1997. The interaction of spatial and object pathways Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 9: 295-317.