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In September 2020, Associate Professor Sam Schwarzkopf gave an invited talk entitled “Neural signatures of visual perception – successes, failures, and potential disasters” via Zoom at the Cardiff University Brain Research Imaging Centre (CUBRIC) in Cardiff, Wales, UK.

The talk covered on-going research on brain mapping methods in his lab: it included work with Catherine Morgan demonstrating the similarity of measurements between MRI scanners with different magnetic field strengths (a comparison of findings in the same people scanned in London and Auckland), and a warning about a statistical artifact in many brain mapping experiments that Susanne Stoll and Elisa Infanti discovered recently. Moreover, he showed the results from experiments by Man-Ling Ho on how the size of visual objects is encoded in the brain, as well as preliminary experiments with Poutasi Watson and collaborators in UQ Brisbane for mapping the representation of the physiological blind spot.

This seminar served as also another reminder of the collaborative and global nature of research.  While borders may be closed and Europe is very far away, modern technology really facilitates scientific discussion in ways that were unthinkable even a decade ago.