My research

We live in a world that is full of sensory information like colours, sounds, textures, tastes, movements, and temperatures. It’s really important for us to be able to use it, because no-one wants to eat gone-off food or step in front of a moving car. So our sense organs – eyes, ears, taste buds, and so on – take in all of this information and pass it on to our brains, which process it and help us react to it in sensible ways.

This sounds very ordinary, but because we have so many different sense organs our brains are constantly facing an extraordinarily complex challenge: how on earth to stick the information from different senses back together so that we don’t end up perceiving barking trees or green clouds or a lemon that tastes like an electric guitar chord. This challenge is called the binding problem and it’s part of what my research was about.

I also worked on a condition called synaesthesia, in which the senses get tangled together so that music might appear to have colours, or words have tastes. Most people who have synaesthesia (including me!) find it pleasant or neutral, though occasionally distracting, so it’s not something that needs a ‘cure’. It’s more like a neutral difference in how each of us relates to the world, like how some people are more extroverted and others are more introverted. However, synaesthesia can come with some potential challenges - for example, you might be more prone to having certain immune-related medical conditions.

You can read more about some of my research papers below.