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Dr. Cate's Research Lab

visual illusion

Research Interests

I do research on the cognitive neuroscience of human visual perception.  I think that understanding the patterns of information present in the visual world helps us to understand the functions of the brain, and vice versa.  Graduate and undergraduate researchers have worked with me using a variety of methods.  Graduate students usually learn methods that involve some computer programming, although most of my past students had little or no experience coding when they started with me.  I don’t expect undergraduate students to do any coding tasks (unless they want to!).  

Most recently, my lab has been investigating:

  • 3D shape perception
  • Pattern recognition in noise (perception of visual clusters)
  • Why AI diffusion model-based image generation is so poor at depicting the correct number of objects

These are other topics I have researched and plan to study again:

  • Visual numeracy (how people identify the number of objects they see)
  • Visual object recognition
  • Memory for visual and spatial information
  • Human-Computer Interaction

I use these methods and techniques to answer research questions:

  • Psychophysics (precise computer-based visual displays)
  • Neuropsychology (studying relationships between patterns of brain injury and perception)
  • Computational modeling (using math or AI models as a basis of comparison with human skills)
  • Neuroimaging analysis (analyzing existing or publicly-available MRI data)

Working with Graduate Students

Graduate students working in Dr. Cate’s lab will gain valuable research experience that will culminate in the completion of a master’s thesis. Students will have access to funding to support their research projects as well as funds for travel to professional conferences.

Graduate students working in Dr. Cate’s lab typically learn to program in MATLAB or R for creating experiments and data analysis. Depending on their research projects, they often also learn neuroanatomy of the cerebral cortex, and functional MRI analysis or meta-analysis.  If you are interested in working with Dr. Cate, please contact him to see if he has openings in his lab at cate@roanoke.edu.

Working with Undergraduate Students

Students working in Dr. Cate’s lab work on a variety of tasks, including data entry and coding, literature reviews, study design and recruitment, data collections, data analysis, and, for students progressively working on more independent tasks, study presentation in various forums.

Interested students should be hard working, self-sufficient, and in good academic standing (but can be any level of student, from freshman to upperclassmen). If you are interested in working with Dr. Cate, please email him at cate@roanoke.edu.

See Undergraduate Research for more information about opportunities, expectations, and course credits.

Recent Publications 

  • Norton, A., Ulrich, C. L., Bell, M. A. & Cate, A. (2018). “Mathematics at Hand.” The Mathematics Educator 27(1): 33–59.
  • Zhang, S., Cate, A. D., Kang, X., Herron, T. J., Yund, E. W., Bao, S. & Woods, D. L. (2015). “Functional and Anatomical Properties of Human Visual Cortical Fields.” Vision Research 109: 107-121.
  • Cate, A. D., Herron, T. J., Yund, E. W., Kang, X. & Woods, D. L. (2012). “Intermodal attention modulates visual processing in dorsal and ventral streams.” Neuroimage 63(3):1295-304.

Presentations

  • Cate, A. D. (2025). “Lateralization of crowding with stereo-defined 3D letters: two pathways for 3D shape perception” Vision Sciences Society Annual Meeting, St. Pete Beach, FL.
  • Cate, A. (2024). “Human perception of clusters in Gaussian-distributed fields of dots.” Central Virginia Chapter of the Society for Neuroscience Meeting, Blacksburg, VA.
  • Cate, A. D. (2023). “Identification of dot clusters in a Gaussian-distributed field: the range of human perception and a comparison with spectral graph clustering.” Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C.
  • Cate, A. D. (2021). “The figural shape of 3D concave regions activates temporopolar cortex.” Vision Sciences Society Annual Meeting, St. Pete Beach, FL.
  • Muralidharan, P. & Cate, A. D. (2018). “Perceptual organization in Parkinson’s disease: A behavioral investigation of basal ganglia dysfunction.” Object Perception and Memory conference (OPAM), New Orleans, LA.
  • Cate, A. D., Cooper, L., Devulapalli, R. , Flynn, T. , Hiles, D.  & Quinn, T.  (2017). “Visual aspects of numeracy neuroimaging: cortical surface-based meta-analysis.” Vision Sciences Society Annual Meeting, St. Pete Beach, FL.

Ad Hoc Reviewer

  • Biological Psychology
  • Brain Research
  • Developmental Neuropsychology
  • Emotion
  • Experimental Brain Research
  • Human Brain Mapping
  • IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (TVCG)
  • Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance
  • Journal of Neuroscience
  • Neurocase
  • Neuroimage
  • Psychonomic Bulletin & Review
  • Scientific Reports
  • Vision Research

Links