The Backus Lab
The goal of the Backus Lab is to understand why things look the way they do and to apply this knowledge clinically. The lab focuses on the long term effects that visual experiences have on perception. Visual appearances are cognitive representations that mediate learning and certain visually guided behaviors, so deficits in the ability to perceive, which can happen even if the eyes are functioning normally, are important to understand. We believe that understanding the adaptive mechanisms of the perceptual system—visual plasticity—will lead to procedures that improve visual function in patients with perceptual deficits.