The Scientist Who Played A Mean Guitar

Keith made important empirical and theoretical contributions to many areas of perception, from visual development in infants to the neural substrates of high-order vision.

He is perhaps best known for his work on visual aftereffects and the influence of viewpoint on object recognition.

Keith's work on all these problems was characterized by creative and elegant experimentation.

Earlier in his life, it was by no means clear that Keith was destined for a career in psychological research. Even more apparent at that time was a creative potential in music. Born and raised in Saint John, New Brunswick, Keith demonstrated his musical talents early in life, delivering a spirited solo rendition of The Chattanooga Shoeshine Boy at a concert held in the Saint John's Home for the Blind while he was still in primary school.

Unsatisfied with mere vocals, as a teenager, he desperately wanted a Fender guitar - and successfully badgered his father, who was not a wealthy man, into taking out a $500 loan so he could buy one. Keith faithfully repaid that loan on installments over the next few years.

Keith and some friends formed their first band, The Slender Thread, in 1966 while he was in Grade 12. His fellow band members have vivid memories of Keith playing lead-guitar breaks while lying on the floor with his head inside the bass drum!

Over the next six years, Keith played in rock bands that included such appellations as The Army of Ichabod Crane, Banana Splat, Chicken for Another Day, Boiler Putty, Pud, and The Ruptured Duck Repair Service. Keith was equally comfortable playing blues, folk, rock, or classical music.

Few of his colleagues at Western, however, knew about Keith's musical talents, but those of us lucky enough to be there when he got out one of his treasured guitars were treated to guitar playing that was remarkably fluent and soulful.

During his band-playing days, Keith pursued his undergraduate studies at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton, where he majored in Psychology and Philosophy.

It was there that he met Bill Demopoulos, a new recruit to the Department of Philosophy at UNB. Keith and Bill became close friends (Bill was only a few years older than Keith).

Bill, now a philosophy professor at Western, remembers Keith as being one of small group of bright young students in his class who seemed destined for bigger things.

Even then, Keith read voraciously and widely - indeed (Bill says) he seemed to read everything! This love of scholarship in the broad sense was something that characterized Keith throughout his life.

The University experience had transformed him. Although music was still important, scholarship and science became Keith's primary passion.

In 1972, Keith left New Brunswick and headed west to the University of British Columbia where he took up graduate work in Psychology.

Keith completed his Ph.D. under the supervision of Richard Tees, studying how the integration of auditory and visual information develops in young infants. As a postdoctoral fellow working with Peter Dodwell and Darwin Muir at Queen's University, Keith met his wife Diane, who was finishing her Ph.D. He persuaded her (among other things) to work together with him in Peter and Darwin's baby lab.

Soon after, Keith took up a post as assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Lethbridge. Their son, Jonah, was born shortly after they arrived. When Jonah was a young boy, Keith so much wanted to be involved in everything that his son did that he volunteered to coach the soccer team that Jonah played in.

At the time, of course, Keith knew absolutely nothing about soccer; he had never even kicked a ball. But he wanted to be there for Jonah.

Keith and Diane never really settled into life in the prairies. By 1985, they decided to take their chances and move back to Ontario. Keith gave up a tenured position at Lethbridge to take a job as a sessional lecturer in the Department of Family and Commercial Studies in the University of Guelph. But then, in 1986, he landed a job as assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at Western.

His reputation preceded him. The Lethbridge folks were still talking about this great prof who knew everything there was to know about visual perception, was a terrific teacher, had a great sense of humour, and, if that wasn't enough, played a mean blues guitar.

Western had the good fortune to have Keith as a member of faculty for nearly twenty years. Keith's knowledge of perception - and cognitive psychology in general - was legendary.

If you were stuck while writing a paper, a visit to his office was guaranteed to help. Keith could always be counted on to find just the right historical reference or to point you towards a related finding in another literature to buttress an argument.

Keith was a founding member of the Group on Action and Perception (GAP), a research team funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health. Indeed, his skills in psychophysics and high-level vision were an invaluable part of GAP's research effort.

It was Keith who came up with the research question that drove GAP's initial foray into functional brain imaging - and the publication that came out of that first experiment marked the beginning of the great adventure in cognitive neuroscience that continues to this day at Western.

If Keith had a failing, it was his fear of flying. Never once did he get into an airplane during his entire time at Western. But it wasn't just airplanes that made him nervous. Even driving down the 401 made him break out into a cold sweat.

Once, after much persuasion, Keith agreed to drive with Diane and Jonah to Florida for ARVO, a vision meeting then held every year in Sarasota. It was a harrowing three-day white knuckled drive down the I-75 that was not to be repeated. What is important to emphasize here, however, is that despite the fact that Keith almost never went to conferences in North America - and never once went to Europe - his work is well known and respected across the world vision community.

Keith was an inspiring teacher. Jason Connolly, a former student, remembers Keith getting "so excited talking about attention research that he was literally running back and forth between the two blackboards and had chalk covering both sides of his arms, all over his shirt and even all through his hair.

The students loved the lecture - largely because of Keith's endearing and slightly eccentric display." Keith's enthusiasm was infectious - and he turned many bright young students towards a career in research.

Over the last three years of his life, Keith's health deteriorated terribly. Through all the tests, all the treatments, and all the pain, Keith somehow managed to be brave and hopeful and even to maintain his wry sense of humour.

Diane too was incredibly strong and courageous. She was Keith's anchor. At the end, Keith died peacefully, surrounded by his family and friends.

Mel Goodale is a psychology professor, colleague and lifelong friend of Keith Humphrey. Recollection is an occasional column remembering the lives of members of the Western community.