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About

David Coggan and his dog

I am broadly interested in how humans visually perceive objects in their environment. My research aims to understand how visual cortex allows us to distinguish and recognize objects, scenes and people from the raw patterns of color and shade that land on the retinae. I am using a range of empirical techniques to investigate this topic, including functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), electroencephalography (EEG), psychophysics and computational modeling. In particular, I have been exploring artificial neural networks as image-computable models of the human visual system, and how current models might be augmented to better capture human visual behaviour and neural processes.

Originally from Bournemouth, England, I completed my Bachelors in Psychology at the University of the West of England in 2013 and a Masters in Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of York in 2014. I then stayed at York to do a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging under Prof. Tim Andrews and Dr. Daniel Baker, which I attained in 2019. Since then, I have been working as a post-doctoral researcher under Prof. Frank Tong at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, USA.

I live on a small, ranch-style home in White Bluff, Tennessee, with two Great Pyrenees mountain dogs, two cats, and a fluctuating number of chickens.

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