Giaschi, Deborah

• Visual and auditory perception in children • Perceptual deficits in amblyopia and developmental dyslexia • Cortical mechanisms involved in visual perception, auditory perception and reading Summary Visual perceptual abilities develop rapidly in infants, but considerable maturation occurs in preschool and elementary school-aged children. Several things can go wrong during the course of this development and a child may be left with visual deficits that interfere with different aspects of life. Of particular interest are motion and depth perception. The goal of our research is to understand the normal development of the underlying brain structures that control these perceptual abilities and to discover the changes in the brain that result in deficits. We focus specifically on a developmental visual disorder called amblyopia, or lazy eye, and a developmental reading disorder called dyslexia.