Laura Cacciamani

Laura Cacciamani is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly). Her research focuses on multisensory integration, object perception, and memory processes in both sighted individuals and those with sensory deficits like blindness or deafness. She employs neuroimaging techniques such as fMRI to investigate how sensory systems collaborate to build environmental understanding.

Education:

• Postdoctoral Fellowship: Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute
• Ph.D. and M.A. in Psychology (Cognition & Neural Systems): University of Arizona
• B.S. in Psychology and Biological Sciences: Carnegie Mellon University

Research Interests: Dr. Cacciamani studies how vision, touch, and hearing interact to shape spatial cognition and object recognition. She explores compensatory mechanisms in visually impaired individuals, such as enhanced tactile perception and drawing-based spatial training. Her work emphasizes the role of the perirhinal cortex in memory and sensory adaptation.

Grants & Advising: She advises graduate and undergraduate students (e.g., Sheparovich, Gibbons, Wack) on projects involving haptic perception and neurostimulation. Her research has been published in journals like Neurobiology of Learning and Memory and Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience.

Labs/Teams: Collaborates with neuroimaging and sensory neuroscience groups, focusing on translational research to aid individuals with sensory impairments through cognitive training and neurotechnology.