Jasna Martinovic
Senior Lecturer
- Psychology
- School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences
Contact details
- Tel: 0131 651 7112
- Email: jmartino (at) ed.ac.uk
Address
- Street
-
Room UF40, Psychology Building
- City
- 7 George Square, Edinburgh
- Post code
- EH8 9JZ
Availability
Please email me if you would like to set up an appointment for a virtual or in-person meeting. I will arrange a time for a meeting as soon as it is convenient for all parties. i normally respond quickly (i.e. same day, if it's a simple query) to emails received within working hours (9am-5pm). My office hours for virtual meetings are 10-11am on Mondays, just drop me an email if you'd like to meet at that time.
Background
After graduating from my first degree in psychology (University of Belgrade, 1995-2001), I spent a year volunteering as a trainee neuropsychologist at three different neurological institutions, testing both children with neurodevelopmental disorders and adults with various neurological conditions. This experience made me realise that I want to pursue further education in cognitive neuroscience. I did a taught masters at the University of Liverpool (2002-2003) in order to learn more about this area of psychology. My masters project investigated episodic memory using fMRI. In order to have pocket money, I volunteered for colour psychophysics experiments and subsequently developed an interest in colour vision and a fascination with the precision of psychophysical methods. I stayed on in Liverpool for an extra year as a research assistant in the colour psychophysics lab, continuing the line of work for which I had volunteered as a participant in the previous year. I contemplated doing a PhD in either visual or auditory neuroscience. In the end, I got funding for both, and decided to move to the University of Leipzig to study visual object recognition using EEG methods (2004-2007). After my PhD I returned to Liverpool and to colour vision research - I stayed there for three more years as a postdoc before taking up a lecturer position in Aberdeen in 2009. I spent 11 fruitful years in Aberdeen and was promoted to senior lecturer in 2013, prior to moving to the University of Edinburgh in 2020.
Qualifications
Diplom(Psych.), MSc (distinction), Dr.rer.nat. (Summa Cum Laude), Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching & Learning in Higher Education
Responsibilities & affiliations
Member of Colour Group GB, International Colour Vision Society, Applied Vision Association (the AVA), Experimental Psychology Society, British Psychological Society.
Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
Editorial board of the journal Visual Neuroscience (Cambridge University Press). Associate Editor of Royal Society Open Science.
Undergraduate teaching
Psychology 1A, Perception lectures
From Perception to Cognition: A Journey in Colour (Honours option)
Research Design lecture for Mini-dissertation
Postgraduate teaching
EEG section for Specialist Techniques in Psychological Research
Writing PhD Proposals for Psychological Research Skills
Open to PhD supervision enquiries?
Yes
Areas of interest for supervision
I am happy to supervise projects on a broad range of topics in visual perception and cognition, in particular those concerned with colour categorisation and the neural representation of colour.
Current PhD students supervised
Past PhD students supervised
Dr Amanda Hardman (University of Aberdeen)
Dr Ana Rozman (University of Aberdeen)
Research summary
How does basic visual information that we sample from the environment in the form of luminance and colour contrast get transformed by our visual system into a representation of our environment? This might seem a trivial question, but the rich world of objects that we experience in everyday life is derived from basic signals about brightness and chromaticity which subsequently get processed by structurally and functionally complex areas of our brain.
My work concerns the neural mechanisms that enable such synergistic processing of luminance and chromatic information. I am particularly interested in how colour and luminance signals feed into mid and higher-level stages of perception, as well as how they are sampled by visual attention. More recently, I also started being interested in categorical effects on colour perception and in colour appearance.
I use a combination of psychophysical and EEG methods in my work. Psychophysics is useful for measuring levels of luminance or colour contrast necessary to perform various visual tasks, or levels of other stimulus properties (e.g. stimulus coherence or density) that lead to certain percepts being formed. On the other hand, EEG provides a window into rapidly occuring neural processes that relate to these visual percepts. By combining them, I hope to extend our knowledge about neural processing of colour.
Knowledge exchange
I was a co-investigator on an EPSRC funded project whose aim is to use models derived from human perception for designing display technology applications such as high dynamic range (HDR) imaging. https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/rainbow/projects/hdr-csf/
Current project grants
2023-2028 Co-Investigator on a Wellcome Trust grant "Lithium's mechanism in bipolar disorder: Investigating the light hypersensitivity hypothesis"
2021-2024 Royal Society international exchange grant with Prof Yulia A. Griber of the Smolensk State University, for a project entitled "The neuroscience of the “Russian Blues”: re-evaluating the perception/cognition interface"
Past project grants
2019-2021: Principal Investigator on a BBSRC international partnering grant with Prof Dan Coates, Optometry, University of Houston, USA with CI Dr Rama Chakravarthi and researcher CI Dr Josephine Reuther, entitled “Investigating the microstructure of human visual fields and generating low-vision applications”.
2018-2021: Principal Investigator on a BBSRC project with CI Dr Rama Chakravarthi and postdoctoral researcher Dr Josephine Reuther of the University of Aberdeen, entitled “Neural mechanisms of long-range spatial vision: an investigation of perceptive, integrative and association fields across the lifespan”.
2017-2021: Co-Investigator on an EPSRC multi-site grant with PI Dr Rafal Mantiuk of the University of Cambridge, PI Prof Sophie Wuerger of the University of Liverpool, CI Prof Graham Finlayson of the University of East Anglia, entitled “A spatio-chromatic colour appearance model for retargeting high dynamic range image appearance across viewing conditions”.
2017-2019: Elucidating the role of colour in shape processing in human vision, a Leverhulme Trust funded project with PI Dr Elena Gheorghiu of the University of Stirling and postdoctoral researcher Dr Damien Wright. I was co-Investigator.
2018: DAAD-funded sabbatical in Germany based at LMU Munich (including visits to EKU Giessen and University of Leipzig) through the “re-invitation for former scholarship holders” scheme.
2011-2013: Early advantage of luminance for object representation and its cross-talk with chromatic pathways in human visual scene analysis, BBSRC New Investigator award, conducted at the Univeristy of Aberdeen with postdoctoral researcher Ben J Jennings.
2011-2014: Neural mechanisms of visual object representation in the human brain, a research project with principal investigator Prof M.M.Mueller and postdoctoral researcher Dr Matt Craddock (University of Leipzig), funded by DFG. I was co-Investigator.
2011: Neurophysiological correlates of Pavlovian-to-Instrumental Transfer (PIT) in heavy drinkers, with principal investigator Prof M. Field (Uni of Liverpool) and co-investigators Dr A. Rose and Dr L. Hogarth, funded by AERC. I was co-investigator.
2010: Time-courses of vision and haptics: an electroencephalographic study, with principal investigator Dr R. Lawson (Uni of Liverpool), funded by the British Academy. I was co-investigator.
2008-2009: Visual object representation, Postdoctoral Fellowship awarded by ESRC, conducted at the University of Liverpool.
2006: Experimental Psychology Society (EPS) study visit grant for a project with Drs M.Bertamini and S.Wuerger entitled “Processing of ordinal and metric cues in depth perception — cue combination or biasing through prior information?”
2004-2007: DAAD PhD scholarship through the "Research Grants for Doctoral Candidates and Young Academics and Scientists" Programme.