Dr. Vickery is a cognitive neuroscientist with interests in visual perception, attention, reward, and decision-making, and he is especially interested in the role of learning in these domains. He seeks to understand both the cognitive and neural bases of these phenomena using both behavioral experiments and neuroimaging in the form of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). A particular focus of recent work in Dr. Vickery’s lab is the interaction between the visual system supporting perception and the systems that support reward processing and decision-making. For instance, how do constraints of the visual system impact decision-making and reward learning? How are associations between visual stimuli and reward formed, and what is the impact of such associations on perception and decision-making? How do the systems that support visual learning interact with those that support domain-general reward learning? This work represents a bridge between his early work, which focused on mid-level vision (visual grouping and crowding) and high-level vision (search and attention), and his more recent interests in reward processing and decision-making. Dr. Vickery’s lab additionally continues to pursue basic questions about visual perception and attention, and is also interested in basic social aspects of decision-making and learning.
