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Consciousness & Cognition

paul.azzopardi@psy.ox.ac.uk

Dr. Paul Azzopardi

Brain damage affecting the striate cortex that causes blindsight - patients' ability to detect or discriminate visual stimuli which they deny seeing. Blindsight is of special interest to scientists and philosophers because it implies that conscious awareness of visual stimuli depends on intact striate cortex, and that activity in other visual areas of the brain is by itself incapable of sustaining a conscious visual representation.

Our research focuses on the neural basis of visual perception and conscious awareness, aincluding cortical magnificaton and M-scaling of visual thresholds, parallel processing, visual motion perception, face perception, visual illusions, perceptual distortions in psychosis, disorders of perception and conscious awareness arising from brain damage in patients with blindsight and visual neglect, and models of perceptual decisions and metacognition. We also conduct research into safety and wellbeing in online, multi-player, gaming environments.

Our team

Paul Azzopardi

Departmental Lecturer in Perception and Psychophysics
Marianne Broeker

DPhil Candidate

Selected publications

Illusory motion perception in blindsight.
Journal article

Azzopardi P. and Hock HS., (2011), Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, 108, 876 - 881
Evaluation of a 'bias-free' measure of awareness.
Journal article

Evans S. and Azzopardi P., (2007), Spat Vis, 20, 61 - 77
Cerebral activity related to guessing and attention during a visual detection task.
Journal article

Azzopardi PJ. and Cowey A None., (2002), Cortex, 38, 833 - 836
Why is blindsight blind?
Chapter

Azzopardi P. and Cowey A., (2001), Out of Mind: Varieties of Unconscious Processes, 3 - 19
Motion discrimination in cortically blind patients.
Journal article

Azzopardi P. and Cowey A., (2001), Brain, 124, 30 - 46
Uneven mapping of magnocellular and parvocellular projections from the lateral geniculate nucleus to the striate cortex in the macaque monkey.
Journal article

Azzopardi P. et al, (1999), Vision Res, 39, 2179 - 2189
Is blindsight like normal, near-threshold vision?
Journal article

Azzopardi P. and Cowey A., (1997), Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, 94, 14190 - 14194
Preferential representation of the fovea in the primary visual cortex.
Journal article

Azzopardi P. and Cowey A., (1993), Nature, 361, 719 - 721

Related research themes

Perception and Cognition