Julie M. Harris facts for kids

Julie Marie Harris (born 1967) is a scientist who studies how we see. She was a Professor of Vision Science at the University of St Andrews. Her work helps us understand how our eyes and brain work together. She also researches how animals use camouflage.

Growing Up and Learning

Julie Harris was born in Wolverhampton, England, in 1967. She first studied physics at Imperial College London. She finished her degree there in 1988.

After that, she went to the University of Oxford. There, she earned her Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil) degree in 1992. A DPhil is a very high university degree, like a PhD. Her research looked at how well our two eyes work together to see depth. This is called stereopsis. She studied how humans see depth compared to a perfect system. She found that humans are not always perfect at seeing depth, especially when things are not smooth.

What Julie Harris Studies

After her studies, Julie Harris moved to San Francisco in 1992. She worked at the Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute for three years.

In 1995, she became a teacher of neuroscience at the University of Edinburgh. Later, in 1998, she moved to Newcastle University. In 2005, she joined the University of St Andrews as a Professor of Psychology.

Professor Harris studies how our visual system works. She wants to know what information our eyes can take in from the world. She also studies how our brain uses this information. She uses different ways to study vision. These include looking at how people behave and using computer models. This helps her understand how human vision works. It also shows how vision connects to our body movements.

How We See Motion and Depth

Her early work looked at how accurately our two eyes see the direction of movement. This is called binocular vision. Through her work, Professor Harris tries to understand many things. She studies how animals use countershading. This is a type of camouflage where an animal's body is darker on top and lighter underneath. This helps them blend in by making their shape harder to see.

She also studies how our brain sees motion, shape, and depth. She looks at different ways our eyes move. Her studies on animal camouflage have included watching how caterpillars use 3D camouflage.

In 2019, Professor Harris and her team made an important discovery. They found out how the brain processes 3D information. They learned that motion signals split into two paths as they go from the eye to the brain. One signal arrives quickly, and the other arrives slowly. This allows the brain to get information from both paths at the same time. This helps our visual system know that there is a 3D object. She has also shown that people with lazy eye syndrome might be able to see fast 3D motion. Professor Harris hopes to use this knowledge to help when visual communication goes wrong.

Vision in Sports

Besides her work on animal camouflage and 3D vision, Professor Harris also studies vision in sports. She looks at how vision and movement work together when training top athletes. In 2019, she received a grant to study how unusual patterns in busy visual places might affect our vision.

Selected Publications

Her publications include:

• Guidance of locomotion on foot uses perceived target location rather than optic flow
• Speed discrimination of motion-in-depth using binocular cues
• Binocular vision and motion-in-depth