Why? Quantifying the level of multi-sensory interactions, or cross-modal plasticity, in visually impaired individuals may help to develop new tools for intuitive evaluation and screening of their vision.

How? This project aims to find new solutions based on multi-sensory processing to quantify the level of impairment (e.g., kind of scotoma) and the deformations produced by it in the spatial and temporal domain. To do so, you will use an interdisciplinary approach using psychophysics, Virtual Reality, Eye Tracking, and Motion Tracking systems combined with EEG. The work's expected results are defining better cortical plasticity associated with the impairment and developing a new tool based on cross-modal signals to obtain a quick evaluation of visual impairment and its potential impact on functional vision.

Where? You will be located at the Fondazione Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (Genova, Italy), a scientific research center that is multidisciplinary and has a very strong approach to technology transfer, under supervision of Monica Gori. Gori has an expertise in development, multi-sensory integration, rehabilitation and visual disability and is the Principal Investigator of the Unit for Visually Impaired People (U-VIP) of IIT. The U-VIP will commit the following existing equipment for the project: one EEG cup BIOSEMI, an EGI system (EBNeuro) a Motion Capture system (Vicon) and eye trackers (Tobii and Eyelink). These systems will be used in psychophysical and neurophysiological tasks. IIT will also commit their resources and machinery from both the Electronic Design Lab and the Mechanical Design Lab for the development of new devices for the proposed experiments. The University of Genova will award the degree and prof. Silvio-Paolo Sabatini, of the Physical Structure of Perception and Computation group, will act as the academic supervisor. In this project, we will collaborate with the University Medical Center Groningen (NL) and the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (NL).

What can you expect to learn and experience? You will learn how to apply psychophysics and EEG and how to develop new rehabilitation devices and methods.Furthermore, you will gain experience in working interdisciplinary and with people with disabilities, and in interacting with research hospitals and rehabilitation centers.

Who are we looking for? We are seeking a candidate with the following research skills and interests: psychophysical evaluation of healthy controls and patients, EEG; programming and data analysis (MATLAB); eye and motion tracking analysis, modeling, development, and validating new tools for screening and quantifying Visual impairment.

References

• M Gori, MB Amadeo, C Campus (2020) Temporal cues trick the visual and auditory cortices mimicking spatial cues in blind individuals Human Brain Mapping 41 (8), 2077-2091
• M Gori, MB Amadeo, C Campus (2020) Spatial metric in blindness: behavioural and cortical processing Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews 109, 54-62
• Gori M., Cappagli G., Tonelli A., Baud-Bovy G. & Finocchietti. S. (2016) Devices for visually impaired people: high technological devices with low user acceptance and no adaptability for children. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 69:79-88. doi: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2016.06.043
• Gori M., Sandini G., Martionoli C. & Burr D. (2014) Impairment of auditory spatial localization in congenitally blind human subjects. Brain, 137(Pt 1):288-93. doi: 10.1093/brain/awt311
• PATENT: Italian Patent Application IT TO2014A000323 (IIT 2013-159) for the ABBI device