Skip Trinity Banner Navigation

Skip to main content »

Trinity College Dublin

Personal Information
Name Newell, Fiona
Main Department Psychology
College Title Associate Professor
E-mail fiona.newell@tcd.ie
College Tel +353 1 896 8402
Web http://www.tcd.ie/Neuroscience/multisensory/
 
Biography
My main research objective is to elucidate the cortical and behavioural processes involved in high-level human perception across the main sensory systems. This interest is motivated by the fact that perception is not a fixed concept since it is significantly modulated by information from other senses and other contextual factors such as past experience, internal predictions, on-going motor behaviour and the working range of the sensory system. Furthermore, Perception is the basis of Cognition, and an understanding of the mechanisms behind how we perceive provides a better route to understanding other high-level human functions. To date, my team and I have begun to shed light on some of the behavioural principles of how the senses interact with one another to form a unified perception of our world. The current challenge is to provide a better understanding of the cortical and genetic mechanisms behind these principles. To this end my team are conducting a series of studies investigating cortical correlates of multisensory perception using neuroimaging (i.e. fMRI and EEG) technology and, in collaboration with colleagues the Smurfit Institute of Genetics at TCD we are investating behavioural and neural correlates of synaesthesia. Lately, I have begun to develop my research towards a better understanding of multisensory processing in the normal, damaged and ageing brain through collaborations with colleagues in the School of Medicine, TCD. Finally, in collaboration with colleagues in Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering, we are currently investigating how virtual displays of crowd scenes can be improved by multisensory stimulation.
 
Membership of Professional Institutions, Associations, Societies
Details Date From Date To
Member of IEEE Robotics Jan 2008
Experimental Psychological Society, UK 2000
Psychonomics Society, USA 2000
British Neuroscience Association 1999
European Society for Cognitive Psychology 2002
 
Awards and Honours
Award Date
Fellow, Trinity College Dublin 2005
'Addison Wheeler' Research Fellow in Life Sciences, University of Durham 1995-1999
 
Description of Research Interests
Multisensory perception; Synaesthesia; Object recognition; Scene recognition; Face perception and facial attractiveness; Perception in visual impaired individuals; Dynamic object recognition; Visual, haptic and auditory perception; Perception of crowds; Perception of emotion; Ageing and multisensory perception.
 
Research Interests
BRAIN AGEING BRAIN-FUNCTION FACE PERCEPTION FACIAL ATTRACTIVENESS
MULTISENSORY PERCECEPTION OBJECT RECOGNITION SPATIAL COGNITION SYNAESTHESIA
VISION, AUDITION, SOMATOSENSATION Virtual Reality
 
Research Projects
Project title Socialising Agents: endowing virtual agents with multisensory social skills to increase appeal and user engagement
Summary There is an increasing demand for more realism in virtual characters, particularly with virtual agents in games designed to interact with the user and in entertainment designed to evoke intense emotions. However, computer graphics experts have little understanding of what underlies our preferences for certain perceptual features over others (such as facial expressions, voice intonations or bodily gestures). In a novel inter-disciplinary project combining computer graphics and social cognitive neuroscience, we will apply principles of human perceptual processing to endow virtual agents with maximum social appeal.
Funding Agency Science Foundation Ireland
Programme PI
Type of Project
Date from July, 2011
Date to June, 2015
Person Months 192
Project title The development of a novel, low-cost intervention games system designed to improve physical and mental well being in older adults
Summary Barriers to healthy ageing include declines in both physical (e.g. postural control) and mental processes (e.g. cognitive decline). As these processes are interconnected one of the main objectives of this project is to develop intervention programmes that train the body and the brain at the same time and are adapted to the needs of older adults. In this collaborative project between QUB and TCD we will create games that profile balance control (QUB expertise), dual tasking, selective attention and sensory integration (TCD expertise). The objective is to create a holistic approach that will result in a new, fun and engaging way for older adults to master new gaming based skills that will improve physical and mental well being.
Funding Agency CARDI: Centre for ageing research and development in Ireland
Programme Research Project
Type of Project Collaborative
Date from March, 2011
Date to October, 2011
Person Months 7
Project title TRIL: Technology Research for Independent Living
Summary The Technology Research for Independent Living (TRIL) project is a large-scale collaboration between Intel Corporation, GE and research teams at UCD, TCD, NUI Galway and St James’s Hospital, Dublin. This multi-disciplinary research centre focuses on discovering how technology can be used to facilitate older people living independent lives in the location of their choice.
Funding Agency Intel Corps., GE and Industrial Development Agency
Programme
Type of Project Collaborative
Date from Dec, 2008
Date to Dec, 2011
Person Months 84
Project title Metropolis: Supercrowds for Multisensory Urban Simulations
Summary This is a novel interdisciplinary project combining computer graphics, sound engineering and cognitive neuroscience research, in which we apply principles of human multisensory perception to create realistic, scalable and large-scale simulations of crowds.
Funding Agency Science Foundation Ireland
Programme PI
Type of Project
Date from Jan, 2007
Date to June, 2011
Person Months 162
Project title MONAT: measurement of naturalness
Summary We instinctively know whether something is natural, or a synthetic mimic. But the key factors responsible for this perception have yet to be identified: this is the primary objective of this project. The perception of naturalness is dominated, in most cases, by visual appearance and touch. Basic visual sensory information, such as colour and gloss, and other visual triggers, such as shape and size is often sufficient to differentiate between natural and synthetic materials. Touching the material serves to reinforce the initial visual perception: here tactile information from cutaneous pressure sensitive and thermal sensory transducers, as well as kinesthetic data, provides the requisite sensory input. This project aims to understand how these sensory data streams are processed by the relevant neural networks and how they contribute to the cognitive processes associated with the perception of naturalness.
Funding Agency EU 6th Framework
Programme EU Pathfinder
Type of Project
Date from Sept, 2006
Date to Aug, 2009
Person Months 72
 
Publications
Peer Reviewed
Simoes-Franklin, C., Whitaker, T.A. & Newell, FN, Active and passive touch differentially activate somatosensory cortex in texture perception, Human Brain Mapping, 32, (7), 2011, p1067-1080
DOI
Setti, A., Finnigan, S., Sobolewski, R., McLaren, L., Robertson, I.H., Reilly, R.B., Anne Kenny, R., Newell, F.N., Audiovisual temporal discrimination is less efficient with aging: an event-related potential study, NeuroReport , 22, (11), 2011, p554–558
DOI
Setti, A., Burke, K.E., Kenny, RA., & Newell, F.N., Is inefficient multisensory processing associated with falls in older people?, Experimental Brain Research., 209, (3), 2011, p375-384
DOI
Roberts, G.M.P. , Newell, F. , Simões-Franklin, C. , Garavan, H., Corrigendum to "Menstrual cycle phase modulates cognitive control over male but not female stimuli" [Brain Res. 1224 (2008) 79-87] (DOI:10.1016/j.brainres.2008.05.061), 2009, - 298
DOI
Barnett KJ, Feeney, J., Gormley, M & Newell FN, An exploratory study of linguistic-colour associations across languages in multilingual synaesthetes, Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 62, (7), 2009, p1343 - 1355
DOI
More Publications>>>
 

Log in to the TCD Portal
Contact:helpdesk@tcd.ie
Last Updated:16-MAY-2012