Indiana University Bloomington

Dr. Thomas W. James


Assistant Professor of Psychology

 

 

 

 

 

Contact Information

Office: PY 158
Office Phone: 856-0841
Lab: PY 293
Lab Phone: 856-1926
E-mail:
E-mail Thomas James

Web site: http://mypage.iu.edu/~thwjames/home.html

 

Educational Background

  • 2001 - Ph.D., University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada

Areas of Study

  • Cognitive neuroscience

Research Topics

  • Visual and haptic perception
  • Object recognition
  • Cross-sensory integration
  • Priming and adaptation
  • Functional neuroimaging

Research Summary:

My research is involved with discovering the neural mechanisms underlying human object recognition and representation. I use a combination of experimental techniques, including functional MRI and psychophysics to explore these questions. I see object representations as multi-sensory. In other words, object representations are sensory in nature, as opposed to being amodal constructs, and object representations are not uni-sensory (e.g., purely visual). Multi-sensory object representations are conceived as an ecological solution for various cognitive phenomena such as object perception and memory and the storage and retrieval of semantic knowledge.

Representative Publications

2007 - James, T.W., Kim, S., & Fisher, J.S. The neural basis of haptic object processing. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 61, 219-229.

2007 - Stevenson, R.A., Geoghegan, M.L., & James, T.W. Superadditive BOLD response in superior temporal sulcus with threshold non-speech objects. Experimental Brain Research, 179, 85-95.

2006 - James, T.W., & Gauthier, I. Repetition-induced changes in BOLD response reflect accumulation of neural activity. Human Brain Mapping, 27, 37-46.

2003 - James, T.W., Culham, J.C., Humphrey, G.K., Milner, A.D., & Goodale, M.A. (2003). Ventral occipital lesions impair object recognition but not object-directed grasping: A fMRI study. Brain, 126, 2463-2475.

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