Seema Prasad, a Ph.D. scholar under the supervision of Prof. Ramesh Kumar Mishra at the Center for Neural and Cognitive Sciences, School of Medical Sciences, University of Hyderabad had submitted an article for the DST AWSAR competition. Her article has been selected to be the best 100 articles among entries received from Ph.D. students from all over India. Augmenting Writing Skills for Articulating Research (AWSAR) is a DST initiative to encourage and train young researchers in India to communicate their research to the wider public.
Seema’s article was based on her work on hearing-impaired individuals. The work which was done along with Prof. Mishra and Dr. Gouri Shanker Patil (Ali Yavar Jung Institute for Hearing-handicapped) shows that the Deaf are better at processing visual information, even when it is barely visible. This enhanced vision arises to compensate for their hearing loss – a mechanism known as brain plasticity.
Seema Prasad is a Cognitive Science Ph.D. student at the Center for Neural and Cognitive Sciences working with Prof. Ramesh Kumar Mishra. In her PhD, she is examining whether it is possible to pay attention to objects that we are not consciously aware of and the nature of this mechanism.