Dr Anina Rich

BSc (Hons), MPsych (ClinNeuro), PhD

Postdoctoral Research Fellow
August 2005-2009: NH&MRC CJ Martin & RG Menzies Fellow

Contact details:

I completed my MPsych/PhD at the University of Melbourne in 2004. My PhD investigated the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying synaesthesia, an unusual phenomenon involving a 'mixing of the senses'. I am currently a CJ Martin/RG Menzies post-doctoral research fellow funded by the NH&MRC to work with Prof Jeremy Wolfe at the Visual Attention Laboratory, Brigham & Women's Hospital/Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, MA, USA. My fellowship project focuses on the way in which we select information in naturalistic scenes, and the brain mechanisms underlying the capture of attention by salient stimuli. The fellowship is maintained through the University of Melbourne, where I will return to continue my work in the Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory from August 2007-2009.

Research Interests:

• Behavioural Neuroscience
• Clinical Neuropsychology
• Cognitive Neuroscience Lab
• Synaesthesia

Professional Associations, Memberships & Awards:

• Cognitive Neuroscience Society (USA)
• Australian Neuroscience Society (Australia)
• Society for Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Neuroscience (Australia)
• Australasian Experimental Psychology Society (Australasia)

Recent Funded Research:

Selected Publications:

Refereed Journal Articles:

Mattingley, J.B., Rich, A.N., Yelland, G., & Bradshaw, J.L. (2001). Unconscious priming eliminates automatic binding of colour and alphanumeric form in synaesthesia. Nature , 410 , 580-582.

Rich, A.N. & Mattingley, J.B. (2002). Anomalous perception in synaesthesia: a cognitive neuroscience perspective. Nature Reviews Neuroscience , 3 , 43-52

Rich, A.N. & Mattingley, J.B. (2003). The effects of stimulus competition and voluntary attention on colour-graphemic synaesthesia. NeuroReport , 14(14), 1793-1798.

Rich, A.N., Bradshaw, J.L., & Mattingley, J.B. (in press). A systematic, large-scale study of synaesthesia: implications for the role of early experience in lexical-colour associations. Cognition.

Edquist, J., Rich, A.N., Brinkman, C., & Mattingley, J.B. (in press). Do synaesthetic colours act as unique features in visual search? Cortex .

Mattingley, J.B., Payne, J.M., & Rich, A.N. (in press). Attentional load attenuates synaesthetic priming effects in grapheme-colour synaesthesia. Cortex .

Book chapters (refereed):

Rich, A.N., Mattingley, J.B., Yelland, G., & Bradshaw, J.L. (2000). Conscious and non-conscious information processing in synaesthesia: a cognitive neuroscience perspective. In Proceedings of the Fifth Bienniel Australasian Cognitive Science Conference . C.Davis, T.van Gelder, R.Wales (Eds.). Causal Productions: Australia.

Mattingley, J.B. & Rich, A.N. (2004). Behavioural and brain correlates of multisensory experience in synaesthesia. In Handbook of Multisensory Integration , G.Calvert, C.Spence, B.Stein (Eds.), Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.