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Professor of cognitive neuropsychology
I am professor in cognitive neuropsychology with the department of psychology, University of Oslo (Norway). I received my B.A. in experimental psychology in 1987 from Universitá La Sapienza (Rome, Italy) and my Ph.D. in biological psychology in 1993 from The University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA). My former research and teaching career includes the Institute of Biological and Medical Psychology, University of Bergen (Norway), and the Departments of Psychology at the University of Tromsø (Norway), University of Guelph (Canada), and Harvard University (USA). I have also been a Clinical Research Fellow, at Harvard Medical School, Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A.
Based on the assumption that “the mind is what the brain does”, I believe that there is much to understand about how the mind works by studying the human brain’s processes. Such a kind of research constitutes the field of cognitive neuroscience. Most (but not all) of my research (and teaching) deals with the cognitive neuroscience of the human visual system and it is based on convergent evidence gathered with variety of methods, which include behavioural measures (i.e., accuracy rates and response times), the study of eye movements and fixations, as well as pupillometry, the analysis of effects of brain lesions in neurological patients, neuroimaging (fMRI), as well as the study of unusually talented individuals (e.g., synaesthetes or professional musicians). Among the research topics that I have dealt with, there are: Visual attention, perception (of colors, object forms and their spatial relations, and faces), mental imagery and mental rotations, visual memory, handedness (e.g., in musicians), and the expression of emotion in music and in human faces  . Some of this research is the results of collaborations with other scientists in Norway and other countries (i.e., Canada, Italy, Japan, Switzerland, The Netherlands, United Kingdom, and the USA). I am current engaged in studies on: the control of the focus of attention; the interface between the scope of attention and spatial perception; the brain’s processing of facial expressions; etc.
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Bruno Laeng