Category: Uncategorized

Lab News | May 2019

Dr. Shams was quoted in one of the neuroscience articles in Medium. 

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UCLA MULTISENSORY PERCEPTION LAB IS PROUD TO PRESENT THE  MULTISENSORY SCIENCE, ART AND TECHNOLOGY SYMPOSIUM 

Prof. Shams will deliver a keynote speech at the 2018 International Multisensory Research Forum.

Dear colleagues,

I would like to announce the beta release of Bayesian Causal Inference toolbox (BCIT), developed at the UCLA Multisensory Perception Lab:

https://github.com/multisensoryperceptionlab/BCIT

BCIT is a MATLAB toolbox developed for learning and using the Bayesian Causal Inference Model of multisensory perception. This NSF-sponsored toolbox was developed for two aims: a) serving as a pedagogical tool for learning and understanding how the model works, and b) for adapting and using the model to explain experimental data in a variety of experimental paradigms. The toolbox is designed for use by researchers of any background, and does not require any computational training or skills.

This is a beta release and we welcome feedback on the existing functionality, as well as suggestions for additional functionality to be added in future releases. Please email the lead developer Dr. Majed Samad (majed.samad@gmail.com) or the assistant developer Kellienne Sita (kellienne.sita@gmail.com) with any questions. Please cc me (ladan@psych.ucla.edu) on your emails.

We look forward to your feedback.

Best regards,

Ladan Shams

Acknowledgement: The development of this toolbox was sponsored by NSF grant BCS-1057969.

Directions for downloading the toolbox:

1. Go to: https://github.com/multisensoryperceptionlab/BCIT
2. Click the green button labelled “Clone or Download”
3. From the dropdown menu select “Download ZIP” to download a folder containing all of the files to the toolbox called “BCIT-Master”
4. Read the brief introduction contained in the README file within the repository. 
5. For further explanations regarding the toolbox and its components please consult the documentation provided under the “Documentation” folder.

Prof. Shams is quoted in this article about “oddly satisfying” videos.

As part of its “Myth or Science” series, the Canadian TV show The Nature of Things aired an episode on sensory perception. The episode featured a segment on our lab that included an interview with Prof. Shams and a demonstration of the rubber hand illusion by our own Majed Samad.

A trailer for the episode can be seen here.
Viewers in Canada can watch the full episode here.

An Inverse Magazine article on sensory deprivation experiments (as depicted in the Netflix series, Stranger Things) includes commentary from Dr. Shams.

Wired magazine’s recent article on sensory perception includes commentary from Ladan Shams.

This article about “seeing” art without using vision mentions two of our studies.

See the press release here, for our Psychological Science paper, “The Brain’s Tendency to Bind Audiovisual Signals is Stable but Not General.”