Dr. Faisal Karmali is the Co-Director of the Jenks Vestibular Physiology Laboratory at Mass. Eye and Ear. His primary research seeks to understand how the brain determines spatial orientation when using senses such as the vestibular system and vision. Most recently, he has been interested in how neural noise results in errors in motion perception, posture, the vestibulo-ocular reflex (eye movements that respond to head movement), and a piloting task. These errors can be critical to survival, yet our understanding of their origins and our ability to test them clinically is still evolving.

Dr. Karmali has made a number of important findings using both human experimental studies and dynamic computational models, applying techniques such as perceptual thresholds, trial-to-trial variability in motor responses and Kalman filters. He has led studies funded by the NIH/NIDCD and the National Space Biomedical Research Institute. He has also been invited to speak nationally and internationally and authored many peer-reviewed publications. His recent collaborations include MIT, NASA, University of Colorado Boulder, The Ohio State University, and University of Houston.

Dr. Karmali and his collaborators recently discovered that a common motion-sickness medication adversely impacts vestibular perception. They have also elucidated how subclinical inter-subject differences in vestibular function contribute to individual differences in postural control and a piloting task. They found that errors in eye movements and perception are similar across a range of stimulus amplitudes. They have also shown that changes the vestibular-evoked eye movements with age follow a dynamic Bayesian framework, meaning that the brain makes optimal use of degraded sensory information. Finally, they have published the most extensive comparison of vestibular and visual perceptual precision.