Question: Do you think that your work makes a difference in the world?

Paul Matusz answered on 11 Nov 2018:

Hi 227memp33,

Thanks for this important question. I work on understanding how what we know about how people pay attention and learn new information in the world differs between traditional research (that typically uses just visual or just auditory etc. objects) and how information is typically presented in the real world – across multiple senses at once (“multisensory information”).
From my experience, both with researchers, but also with specialists who care about these functions in the real world – head teachers, teachers and educators, as well as doctors treating different disorders of the brain from the eyes through dyslexia to problems with moving – do recognise the fact that the existing research may be limited in what it can tell us about “real world” attention and memory. That’s the more “theoretical” side of my research.

The line of my research that I think will most likely have the most direct effect on people’s lives and “the world” is a project where we test if virtual reality games can be a potential new treatment for kids with “lazy eye”. Currently the existing treatment – like patching the dominating eye, up to 6h per day! – are very slow (years) and patients really dislike it. And they are not this effective. So if we can help these treatments by those involving fun games, that’d be amazing!
You can learn more about this project on my group’s website – https://groupforrealworldneuroscience.wordpress.com/understanding-the-role-of-attention-in-visual-rehabilitation-amblyopia-as-a-model-gambly/ .