Michael Barnett-Cowan

Contact Info

Office: BMH 3033

Phone: 519-888-4567, ext. 49177

Email: 519-888-4567, ext. 49177

Webpages:

https://uwaterloo.ca/kinesiology-health-sciences/profiles/michael-barnett-cowan

https://mbclab.ca/               

Education:

PhD York University (Experimental Psychology)

Banting Post-doctoral Fellowship  (Western)

Research

The brain receives information about the environment from all the senses. To efficiently interact with the environment, the brain must make sense of this converging information in order to form a reliable and accurate percept with which to guide decision-making and behaviour. I am the Director of the Multisensory Brain and Cognition Lab, which seeks to determine how the brain integrates multisensory information. As a cognitive and systems neuroscientist, I investigate how multisensory processing impacts spatial and temporal perception, decision-making and human movement in real, virtual and artificial intelligence created environments. My research has helped to identify key markers of disease and test the efficacy of therapeutic and rehabilitation efforts to combat disorientation, especially in differently abled populations. My discoveries about vestibular (balance) perception have also led to practical applications in the calibration of virtual reality environments and motion simulators.