Dr Romi Nijhawan

Biography

Sussex University: Psychology Home Page

Education:  Punjab University, India; Rutgers University, New Jersey; University of California, Berkeley.
Postdoc/Research Associate:  Cornell University, New York; California Institute of Technology.
Degrees:  MA, MSc, PhD

Dr Nijhawan is interested in the flash-lag effect and its implications for the interaction of the animal with the environment.  The flash-lag effect occurs when observers view a moving object a part of which is briefly flashed.  Observers see a 'break' between the moving part and the flashed part, with the flashed part appearing in a lagging position. 

Dr Nijhawan has the honour of publishing the first paper (in 1994) to mention the term "flash-lag effect", and starting intense research activity on this topic.  Professors Schlag and Schlag-Rey (2002) of UCLA School of Medicine have described the proposal in the 1994 paper as one of the "most-daring proposals... with bold disregard for the venerable".

Since 1994, Dr Nijhawan and colleagues have shown that the flash-lag effect occurs for changing (non-moving) visual stimuli, during eye-movements, and most recently for voluntary limb movements in total darkness. 

The flash-lag paradigm has been successfully used to investigate topics such as: colour vision, visual attention, visual masking, perceptual filling-in, and forward models for motor control.  Effects of sporting experience, alcohol, age and dysfunction of the nervous system are in the process of being investigated with this method.

Student Consultation

Mondays & Fridays 2-3 pm

Maus, Gerrit W, Ward, Jamie, Nijhawan, Romi and Whitney, David (2013) The perceived position of moving objects: transcranial magnetic stimulation of area MT+ reduces the flash-lag effect. Cerebral Cortex, 23 (1). pp. 241-247. ISSN 1047-3211

Changizi, Mark A, Hsieh, Andrew, Nijhawan, Romi, Kanai, Ryota and Shimojo, Shinsuke (2008) Perceiving the present and a systematization of illusions. Cognitive Science, 32 (3). pp. 459-503. ISSN 03640213

Maus, Gerrit and Nijhawan, Romi (2006) Forward displacement of fading objects in motion: The role of transient signals in perceiving position. Vision Research, 46 (26). pp. 4375-4381. ISSN 0042-6989

Nijhawan, Romi, Watanabe, Katsumi, Khurana, Beena and Shimojo, Shinsuke (2004) Compensation for neural delays in visual-motor behaviour: No evidence for shorter afferent delays for visual motion. Visual Cognition, 11 (2-3). pp. 275-298. ISSN 0042-6989

Nijhawan, Romi and Kirschfeld, Kuno (2003) Analogous mechanisms compensate for neural delays in the sensory and the motor pathways: evidence from motor flash-lag. Current Biology, 13 (9). pp. 749-753. ISSN 0960-9822

Nijhawan, Romi (2002) Neural delays, visual motion and the flash-lag effect. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 6 (9). pp. 387-393. ISSN 1364-6613

Watanabe, Katsumi, Nijhawan, Romi and Shimojo, Shinsuke (2002) Shifts in perceived position of flashed stimuli by illusory object motion. Vision Research, 42. pp. 2645-2650.

Nijhawan, Romi (2001) The flash-lag phenomenon: Object motion and Eye movements. Perception, 30 (3). pp. 263-282. ISSN 0301-0066

Sheth, Bhavin R, Nijhawan, Romi and Shimojo, Shinsuke (2000) Changing objects lead to briefly flashed ones. Nature Neuroscience, 3. pp. 489-495. ISSN 1097-6256