Federico Segala
PhD Student

Profile

Biography

I completed both my BSc (Hons) Natural Sciences specialising in Neuroscience in 2018 and my MSc in Cognitive Neuroscience in 2019 at the University of York. For my BSc project I investigated the perception of motion in depth using EEG and for my MSc project I investigated the neural substrates of colour perception using fMRI. From 2019 to 2020 I worked as a research assistant for Dr Daniel Baker and Dr Aurelio Bruno. During this period, I worked on two studies: one investigated the response of the pupils (using an eyetracker) and the brain (using EEG) to flickering light and the other investigated the temporal aspects of gaze perception.

Career

• PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, University of York (UK), 2020-present
• Research Assistant for Dr Daniel Baker and Dr Aurelio Bruno, University of York (UK), 2019-2020
• MSc in Cognitive Neuroscience, University of York (UK), 2018-2019
• BSc (Hons) Natural Sciences specialising in Neuroscience, University of York (UK), 2015-2018

Departmental roles

• Graduate Teaching Assistant

University roles

• Natural Sciences representative for Psychology (2016-2017)
• Natural Sciences representative for Neuroscience specialisation (2015-2016)

Research

Overview

Binocular integration of light in amblyopia and autism

Projects

The pupillary response to light is a basic physiological reflex that has been extensively studied. The anatomical pathways, involving various subcortical structures, are reasonably well understood. However, much less is known about the computational process by which different levels of light in the left and right eyes are used to determine overall pupil diameter. This likely involves binocular interactions, including summation and interocular suppression, similar to those that occur cortically in pattern vision, but in an anatomically segregated pathway.

The project aims to investigate how light signals are combined across the two eyes in both subcortical pathways (measured using pupillometry) and in cortical visual pathways (measured using EEG). We will do this for adults with typical visual systems and adapt existing computational models of binocular combination to understand the results. Next we will investigate how these processes of signal combination and suppression are affected in individuals with disorders of binocular vision (amblyopia) or of sensory processing more generally (autism).

Grants

• Departmental Studentship

Collaborators

• Dr Daniel Baker
• Dr Aurelio Bruno

Teaching

Undergraduate

• Brain & Behaviour 2 Tutorials

Publications

Selected publications

• Himmelberg, M. M., Segala, F. G., Maloney, R. T., & Wade, A. R. (2019). Decoding neural responses to motion-in-depth using EEG. BioRxiv, 661991.