Faculty
Dr. Jason Barton, Dr. Jean Chuo, Dr. Claire Sheldon and Dr. Sara Simpson
Clinical Activities
We provided clinics and teaching at St. Paul’s Hospital, VGH Eye Care Centre, UBC Hospital MS Clinics, and BC Children’s Hospital, with 10 half-day adult and 2 half-day pediatric clinics per week. J Lindley and K Wade also provided Botox clinics. There was a monthly neuro-ophthalmology clinic in Victoria. During the year there were 5,567 adult patient visits.
Research Activities
This year saw the formation of the Visual Cognitive Neuroscience Group, with the recruitment of I Oruç and M Spering to join D Giaschi and J Barton. The division made 22 research presentations, gave 6 invited international research lectures, and had 17 salary or operating grants continuing during 2011. We published 3 chapters, 8 commentaries, and 24 peer-reviewed research articles, with another 6 at the epub stage, including work in general science journals such as PLoSONE and Proc Roy Soc London B (Biol Sci), as well as high-impact neuroscience journals such as Cortex and Cerebral Cortex.
Highlights include a series of papers modeling simultanagnosia with visual constriction paradigms, the first description of a patient with a lesion of the superior temporal sulcus causing impairments in perception of face expression, studies of virtual hemianopia showing the impact of field defects alone on behaviour, the first demonstration of enhanced face discrimination after adaptation, and new studies on the interaction between pursuit eye movements and motion perception.
Teaching Activities
Three fellows from UBC, Nigeria and Tasmania completed clinical fellowships and two from UBC and University of Alberta began new fellowships in Jul 2011. Our fourth-year medical student elective hosted 8 students. J Viswanathan defended her Master’s thesis on ‘the global effect for antisaccades’ in the neuroscience program. D Anderson received the 2011 Teacher of the Year Award from the UBC department of ophthalmology and visual sciences.
Our research laboratory staff included 7 post-doctoral fellows, 5 graduate students, 7 medical students or residents, 2 research assistants, and 7 summer students.
Other
J Barton is vice president of the Canadian Neurological Society and B Sexton is treasurer of the British Columbia Society of Eye Physicians and Surgeons. J Barton reviews as a member of the Faculty of 1000 Medicine, serves on the CIHR Behavioural Sciences B committee, and is an academic editor for PLoSONE.