The University of Queensland

RESEARCH QUESTIONS:
People have different levels of ability to have imagined sensory experiences. Some people cannot evoke imagined experiences at all (aphantasics, including Derek Arnold) while others have unusually intense imagined experiences (hyperphantasics / synaesthetes). What features of brain activity are responsible for these differences?

The human brain has been described as a predictive machine. How does it generate and implement the predictions that allow us to interact with our dynamic environment - so we can catch or avoid flying objects?

The human brain generates feelings of confidence whenever we make a perceptual decision. What features of sensory brain activity contribute to these feelings of confidence?

Humans can judge the relative timing of different events, and the extent of time that passes during an event. How do our brains encode time and timing?

Sensory analyses are often independent of one another, can take place in different brain regions and be completed at different rates. How do they combine across space and time to create subjectively unified experiences?

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:
Saurels, B.W., Frommelt, T., Yarrow, K., Lipp, O.V. & Arnold, D.H. (2022). Neural prediction errors depend on how an expectation was formed. Cortex 147: 102 - 111.

Arnold, D.H., Saurels, B.W., Anderson, N.L. & Johnston, A. (2021). An observer model of tilt perception, sensitivity and confidence. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series B: Biological Sciences 288: 20211276.

Arnold, D.H., Williams, J.D., Phipps, N.E., & Goodale, M,A. (2016). Sharpening vision by adapting to flicker. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 113: 12556 – 12561.

Miller, P., Wallis, G, Bex, P. & Arnold, D.H. (2015). Reducing the size of the human physiological blind spot through training. Current Biology 25: R747 - R748.

Johnston, A., Arnold, D.H. & Nishida, S. (2006). Spatially localised distortions of perceived duration. Current Biology 16: 472 - 479.

Arnold, D.H., & Johnston, A. (2003). Motion induced spatial conflict. Nature 425: 181 - 184.

RESEARCH GRANTS:
2020 - 2023: ARC Discovery Grant
Novel psychophysical paradigms for examining predictive coding in vision (Arnold Johnston) AUD 365,000

2018 - 2020: ARC Discovery Grant
Why does time seem to drag and fly? (Arnold Yarrow Johnston) AUD 199,412

2014 - 2017: ARC Future Fellowship
Human Vision: Predicting the present? Suppressing the past? (Arnold) AUD 832,708

2014 - 2016: ARC Discovery Grant
Distorted Time Perceptions: Altered neural coding or decisional criteria? (Arnold & Yarrow) AUD 163,000

2009 - 2013: ARC Discovery Grant & Australian Research Fellowship Human Time Perception (Arnold) AUD 394,000

2011 - 2013: ARC Discovery Grant
The Emotional Face (Lipp & Arnold) AUD 171,722

2008 - 2010: ARC Discovery Grant
Determinants & Consequences of conscious visual awareness (Arnold, Grove & Lipp) AUD 181,000

2006 - 2008: ARC Discovery Grant & Australian Postdoctoral Fellowship
Motion & Spatial Coding in Vision (Arnold & Johnston) AUD 320,000

2008: University of Queensland, Research Excellence Award
Identifying the neural mechanisms for time perception (Arnold) AUD 60,000