In November 2021, I joined the lab of Prof. Cornelissen at the University Medical Center in Groningen, the Netherlands. I am one of several new PhDs at the lab.

Personal Background and Interest:

I grew up in Germany and have since then lived in the Netherlands, Italy and Spain. I enjoy hiking and being outside in nature, but also love music and theater. My academic background is in Psychology (BSc.) and Behavioural and Cognitive Neuroscience (MSc.). Currently, I am doing my PhD in Visual Neuroscience as part of the OptiVisT program.

Aim of the project:

The project aims at the development of novel techniques to investigate human vision. We will use one or more of the novel technologies, such as eye-tracking, virtual reality, augmented reality and artificial intelligence, to gain insight into an individual's visual capabilities. This includes healthy individuals as well as patient groups for diagnosis. For many patient groups there are still many challenges in clinical work. This is especially the case for children, the elderly or visually impaired individuals.

Current activities:

As a first step, I will determine to what extent it is possible to assess the visual system by observing gaze direction in response to watching parts of movies.There have been earlier approaches on this paradigm in the Cornelissen Lab on which I can build. Additionally, I will make use of the SONDA method which was developed in Groningen. Further projects will prospectively be based on these first experiences.

In my first project, I have developed a novel method for reconstructing visual fields based on eye-movements during the free-viewing of video clips (‘free-viewing perimetry’). To reconstruct a visual field, I combine information on the temporal occurrence of eye-movements. This method has been applied to eye-movement data from participants with and without simulated visual field defects and participants with a real visual impairment. This method has the potential to accurately discriminate between visually healthy and impaired participants based on the eye-movements made during movie viewing alone. 

Recently (May 2023) I have started my cross-country secondment project at RegionH in Copenhagen where I am involved in a project that tests new perimetric methods in patients at the pediatric oncology. The project will assess archetypical and observed visual field defects that are due to tumors in children. 

Future directions:

As a next step I will prepare magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) brain data from the pediatric patients’ files for inclusion. Following delineation of the tumors and the relevant visual white matter structures, the MRI data will then be compared with outcomes from different perimetry methods. Herein, we are especially interested in how far children are similar to what we know from the literature about adults.