olson lab


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 Research Description

Humans can recognize an object in a fraction of a second and type 70 words per minute, yet when asked to do two tasks at once or remember four locations, severe limitations become apparent. Research in our lab asks the question of how visual cognition remains so good in the face of bottlenecks imposed by attention and working memory. To investigate processing bottlenecks and to elucidate the strategies humans use to overcome these limitations, we use a variety of techniques: behavioral analysis, fMRI, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and patient testing.


The documents found here have been provided for the timely dissemination of scholarly work on a noncommercial basis. Copyright is maintained by the authors or by other copyright holders. It is understood that all persons copying this information will adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright.


Publications

Visual Memory
  • Olson, I.R., Plotzker, A., Ezzyat, Y. (2007). The Enigmatic temporal pole: a review of findings on social and emotional processing. Brain. pdf

  • Olson, I.R., Ezzyat, Y. (2007). The Human Medical Temporal Lobe is Critical for Encoding Items into Visual Working Memory. Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Neuroscience. pdf

  • Olson, I.R., Page, K., Moore, K.S., Chatterjee, A., Verfaellie, M. (2006). Working memory for conjunctions relies on the medial temporal lobe. Journal of Neuroscience, 26(17): 4596-4601. pdf

  • Olson, I.R., Moore, K.S., Stark, M., Chatterjee, A. (2006). Visual working memory is impaired when the medial temporal lobe is damaged. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 18(7): 1-11. pdf

  • Olson, I.R., Jiang, Y. & Moore, K.S. (2005). Associative learning improves visual working memory performance. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 31(5): 889-900. pdf

  • Olson, I.R. & Marshuetz, C. (2005). Remembering "What" Brings Along "Where" in visual working memory. Perception & Psychophysics, 67(2): 185-194. pdf

  • Olson, I.R. & Jiang, Y. (2004). Visual short-term memory is not improved by training. Memory & Cognition, 32(8): 1326-1332. pdf

  • Olson, I.R., Zhang, J.X., Mitchell, K.J., Johnson, M.K., Bloise, S.M., Higgins, J.A. (2004). Preserved spatial memory over brief intervals in older adults. Psychology and Aging, 19: 310-317. pdf

  • Olson, I.R. & Jiang, Y. (2002). Is visual short term memory object based? Rejection of the "strong-object" hypothesis. Perception & Psychophysics, 64(7): 1055-1067. pdf

  • Jiang, Y., Olson, I.R. & Chun, M.M. (2000). Organization of visual short term memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 26(3): 683-702. pdf

Attention
  • Olson, I.R., & Chun, M.M. (2001). Perceptual constraints on implicit learning of spatial context. Visual Cognition, 9: 273-302. pdf

  • Olson, I.R., Chun, M.M, & Anderson, A.K. (2001) Effects of phonological length on the attentional blink. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 27: 1116-1123. pdf

  • Olson, I.R. & Chun, M.C. (2001). Temporal contextual cuing of visual attention. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 27: 1299-1313. pdf

  • Olson, I.R., Chun, M.M, & Allison, T. (2001). Contextual guidance of attention: Human intracranial event-related potential evidence for feedback modulation in anatomically early, temporally late stages of visual processing, Brain, 124: 1417-1425. pdf

Perceptual Learning
  • Yi, D., Chun, M.M., Olson, I.R. (2005-in press). Shape-specific perceptual learning in a figure-ground segregation task. Vision Research. pdf

Face Perception
  • Olson, I.R. & Marshuetz, C. (2005) Facial attractiveness is appraised in a glance. Emotion, 5(4): 498-502. pdf

  • Donegan, N.H., Stanislow, C.A., Blumberg, H.P, Fulbright, R.K., Lacadie, C., Skudlarski, P, Gore, J.C, Olson, I.R., McGlashan, T.H., Wexler, B.E. (2003). Amygdala hyperreactivity in borderline personality disorder: implications for emotional dysregulation. Biological Psychiatry, 54: 1284-1293. pdf

Visual, Auditory, and Intersensory Perception
  • Hampson, M., Olson, I.R., Leung, H-C. & Gore, J.C. (2004). Changes in functional connectivity of human MT/v5 with visual motion input. Neuroreport, 15(8): 1315-1319. pdf

  • Jiang, Y., Chun, M.M., & Olson, I.R. (2004). Perceptual Grouping in Change Detection. Perception & Psychophysics, 66(3): 446-453. pdf

  • Ross, D.A., Olson, I.R., Marks, L.E., & Gore, J.C. (2004). A nonmusical paradigm for identifying absolute pitch possessors. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 116(3): 1793-1799. pdf

  • Ross, D.A., Olson, I.R., & Gore, J.C. (2003). Absolute pitch does not depend on early training. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 999: 522-526. pdf

  • Ross, D.A., Olson, I.R., & Gore, J.C. (2003). Cortical plasticity in an early blind musician: an fMRI study. Magnetic Resonance Imaging, 21(7): 821-828. pdf

  • Olson, I.R., Gatenby, J.C., & Gore, J.C. (2002). A comparison of bound and unbound audio-visual information processing in the human cerebral cortex. Cognitive Brain Research, 14: 129-138. pdf