Marlene Behrmann, PhD, John and Clelia Sheppard Chair in Ophthalmology at the University of Pittsburgh, is receiving an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Copenhagen in the fall.
Dr. Behrmann studies the psychological and neural bases of visual processing, with specific interest in the mechanisms by which the signals from the eye are transformed into meaningful percepts by the brain. She adopts an interdisciplinary approach combining computational, neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies with adults and children in both health and disease.
Since Dr. Behrmann joined the Department of Ophthalmology in 2022, she has been able to collaborate with others in the Department to determine whether — in blind people participating in vision restoration clinical trials — signals from the eyes are received by the visual system of the brain, which is critical for functional vision. The research determines if the signals cascading from the eyes differ depending on what the individual is viewing (as it should, to register that there are different objects).
Dr. Behrmann’s longstanding interest is designed to understand the visual system of the brain; she is currently using electroencephalography (EEG) and functional MRI methodologies to compare the brain activation in controls with those of individuals with a deficit in perception following brain damage such as a stroke, head injury or tumor.
Recently, she has also been studying the potential for plasticity and reorganization of the visual system of the brain in children, who have more plasticity than adults. She is looking at a particular population of children who, after a large resection (even of an entire hemisphere) for the management of drug-resistant epilepsy, have only visual cortex in the single, preserved hemisphere.
The overarching goal of all this research is to understand how humans see, to develop therapeutic approaches to aid those who cannot.
Dr. Behrmann is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Among her awards are the Presidential Early Career Award for Engineering and Science, APA Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contributions, Kavli Distinguished Career Contributions in Cognitive Neuroscience, and the Howard Crosby Warren Medal from the Society of Experimental Psychologists.