The Department of Kinesiology and Health Sciences is a division of the Faculty of Health
Contact
Office: BMH 1042
Phone: 519-888-4567, ext. 49177
Email: mbc@uwaterloo.ca
Website: Multisensory Brain and Cognition Lab
Twitter: Follow @multisensebrain
Research interests
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. The lab has a specific interest in the vestibular (balance) system and determining how information about head movement and orientation is combined with the other senses to enable optimal object recognition, decision-making, and coordinated movement in the normal, injured, diseased, and aging brain.
Graduate supervision and student opportunities
- Research volunteer
- Undergraduate thesis
- MSc thesis
- Coursework interns
- PhD thesis
- Postdoctoral Fellowship
- Research assistant/coordinator
Please email me to discuss current available opportunities.
Graduate studies application details
Teaching, expertise, tools and technologies
- Psychophysics
- Sensory assessment
- Virtual reality
- Motion simulation
- Eye and head movement
- Brain imaging and stimulation (EEG/ERP, TMS,tDCS)
- Aging
Courses
KIN 255: Introduction to Neuroscience for Kinesiology
KIN 356: Information Processing in Human Perceptual Motor Performance
KIN 457: Cognitive, Perceptual and Motor Assessment
KIN 470: Multisensory Perception & Action
KIN 654: Instrumentation in Neuroscience Research
Education
BA Experimental Psychology (with Honors), Univeristy of Guelph
MA Experimental Psychology, York Univeristy
PhD Experimental Psychology, York University
Post-Doctoral Fellowship, Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, University of Tübingen
Post-Doctoral Fellowship, Brain and Mind Institute, Western University
Selected publications
See Google Scholar for full list of publications.
Bansal, A., Weech, S., & Barnett-Cowan, M. (2019). Movement-Contingent Time Flow in Virtual Reality Causes Temporal Recalibration. Scientific reports, 9(1), 4378.
Weech, S., Kenny, S., & Barnett-Cowan, M. (2019). Presence and cybersickness in virtual reality are negatively related: a review. Frontiers in psychology, 10, 158.
Sachgau, C., Chung, W., & Barnett-Cowan, M. (2018). Perceived timing of active head movement at different speeds. Neuroscience letters, 687, 253-258.
Barnett-Cowan, M., Ernst, M. O., & Bülthoff, H. H. (2018). Gravity-dependent change in the ‘light-from-above’prior. Scientific reports, 8(1), 15131.
Weech, S., Varghese, J. P., & Barnett-Cowan, M. (2018). Estimating the sensorimotor components of cybersickness. Journal of neurophysiology, 120(5), 2201-2217.
Wise, A., & Barnett-Cowan, M. (2018). Perceived simultaneity and temporal order of audiovisual events following concussion. Frontiers in human neuroscience, 12, 139.
Basharat, A., Adams, M. S., Staines, W. R., & Barnett-Cowan, M. B. C. (2018). Simultaneity and temporal order judgments are coded differently and change with age: an event-related potential study. Frontiers in integrative neuroscience, 12, 15.