Simon Cropper

Associate Professor Simon Cropper is a faculty member at the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences within the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences at the University of Melbourne. His research focuses on the relationship between human sensory performance and underlying neurophysiology, with particular emphasis on visual processing and cognition.

• Primary Research Focus: Individual differences in perception
• Professional Association: Vision Sciences Society
• ORCID: 0000-0002-3574-6414

Dr. Cropper's research interests span color perception, motion perception, excitation and sensation in the brain, individual differences, dreams, hallucination and reality, insight and problem solving, science and art integration, time perception, and cognition and metacognition. His overarching contention is that the brain is fundamentally a 'slave to sense' and that dreams, hallucination and reality exist along a continuum rather than resulting from qualitatively different processes.

His recent publications (2021-2024) demonstrate a strong interdisciplinary approach, connecting visual perception with cultural astronomy, creativity research, and clinical applications. A notable trend is his cross-disciplinary collaboration examining how humanity has found meaning in the night sky from ancient times to the present. His work also explores the nature of creativity, particularly the 'Aha moment,' and the relationship between naming unrelated words and creative capacity.

Dr. Cropper's scientific contributions include research on perceptual grouping principles that explain similarities in constellations across cultures, the measurement of time perception and metacognition, and the relationship between dynamic face processing and psychiatric symptoms.

• Star Constellation Identification - McCoy Seed Fund (2018-2019)
• Perception, Cognition & Psychosis (2012-2013)

His research methodology is grounded in early career training in physiology and visual psychophysics, which provides strong methodological rigor. Dr. Cropper emphasizes the importance of communicating scientific findings to broader audiences, drawing inspiration from both arts and sciences in his work.