Ione Fine, Ph.D.
Professor
Advising:
Possibly accepting new graduate students in 2026-2027, please email with questions.
Interests: Sight recovery technologies. The effects of long-term visual deprivation, Adult perceptual learning and plasticity, Psychophysics, fMRI and computational vision.
Links:
Research
I'd recommend the following site (https://depts.washington.edu/chnadmin/) to prospective students interested in human neuroscience. You can easily browse a list of faculty doing human neuroscience at UW and there's a page for FAQ.
My laboratory studies the computational and neurophysiological basis of visual processing, using a wide range of computational and experimental techniques, including functional magnetic resonance imaging, patient studies, psychophysics and computational modeling.
Right now the lab has two main research directions. The first is plasticity in the visual system, including studies on perceptual learning in adulthood and the neural reorganization that occurs as a result of being blind or deaf.
The second is developing better stimulation protocols for retinal prostheses.
My main webpage is www.finelab.org
My google scholar profile mysteriously ends in 2017 (perhaps that's a hint?), but you can find a full list of publications in PubMed.
Education
University of Rochester (1999)
- July 29, 2024 Ione Fine and Geoffrey Boynton publish research showing that cortical implants unlikely to exceed normal human vision
- June 16, 2022 Ione Fine was selected as the next Bloedel Scholar by UW's Virginia Merrill Bloedel Hearing Research Center
- April 27, 2021 Congratulations to Ione Fine and Geoffrey Boynton, who received a five-year, $1,880,561 award from the NIH National Eye Institute!
- June 27, 2020 Ione Fine, Alicia Izuierdo (UCLA) and Yael Niv (Princeton University) organized a virtual conference, which provides practical strategies for recognizing and overcoming implicit bias in labs and institutions
- May 8, 2019 Ione Fine and Kelly Chang are featured in this UW News story on how the brains of blind people adapt to increase hearing acuity.
- February 11, 2019 Ione Fine is featured in this Duke Research Blog article on overcoming judgement biases in STEM
- September 10, 2018 Congratulations to Michael Beyeler, a postdoc in Ione Fine's lab, who was recently awarded a K99 grant from National Eye Institute for research on virtual prototyping for retinal prosthesis patients.
- April 9, 2018 Vision Monday recently reported that Ione Fine will be the Keynote Speaker for the 13th annual Envision Conference
- March 8, 2018 A new study by Ione Fine and doctoral student Alicia Shen quantifies the glass ceiling for women in academic publishing.
- September 13, 2017 Ione Fine’s student, Ezgi Yucel, has just received a WRF Innovation Graduate Fellowship in Neuroengineering, co-funded with the eScience Institute, from the UW Institute of Neuroengineering. These fellowships are highly prestigious and selection is competitive. Congratulations, Ezgi!
- July 19, 2017 Congratulations to Ione Fine, who just received a 5 year award from the National Eye Institute for her research on the effects of blindness!
- January 4, 2017 Geoff Boynton and Ione Fine’s research on retinal implants cited in Mashable story about bionic eyes.
- August 5, 2015 Ione Fine and Geoff Boynton’s work on visual simulations using a bionic eye have been brought to light in an article by The Telegraph
- April 27, 2015 We aren’t the only ones who see the incredible work Ione Fine and Geoffrey Boynton are doing.
- October 10, 2011 Steve Buck, Ione Fine, and Geoff Boynton organized the Optical Society of America Vision Meeting, held on campus, September 15-18.
- January 31, 2011 Ione Fine received a Royalty Research Fund grant
- January 5, 2010 Ione Fine, Cheryl Kaiser, Scott Murray, and Joe Sisneros were approved by the College Council for promotion with tenure.
- November 3, 2009 Ione Fine was elected to be a Fellow of the Optical Society of America.
- Early Age-Related Hearing Loss Investigation (EARHLI): A Randomized Controlled Trial to Assess theMechanisms Linking Early Age-Related Hearing Loss and Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias
- Learning to see again: biological constraints on cortical plasticity and the implications for sight restoration technologies
- Go to http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Fine%2C+Ione for an up to date list of publications
- Fine, I., Boynton, G.M., Pulse trains to percepts: A virtual patient describing the perceptual effects of human visual cortical stimulation. Scientific Reports, 2024 Jul 29;14(1):17400.
- Fine, I. & Park, W. J. Do you hear what I see? How do early blind individuals experience object motion? Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 2023, 378, 20210460
- Meier K, Tarczy-Hornoch K, Boynton GM, Fine I. Characterizing amblyopic perception under non-rivalrous viewing conditions. Sci Rep. 2023 May 17;13(1):7993. doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-31301-8.PMID: 37198211
- Park WJ, Fine I. The perception of auditory motion in sighted and early blind individuals. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2023 Dec 5;120(49):e2310156120. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2310156120. Epub 2023 Nov 28.PMID: 38015842
- Esquenazi RB, Meier K, Beyeler M, Boynton GM, Fine I. Learning to see again: Perceptual learning of simulated abnormal on- off-cell population responses in sighted individuals. J Vis. 2021 Dec 1;21(13):10. doi: 10.1167/jov.21.13.10.
- Park WJ, Fine I. New insights into cortical development and plasticity: from molecules to behavior. Curr Opin Physiol. 2020
- Blindness and Human Brain Plasticity. Fine I, Park JM. Annu Rev Vis Sci. 2018
- Learning to see again: biological constraints on cortical plasticity and the implications for sight restoration technologies. Beyeler M, Rokem A, Boynton GM, Fine I. J Neural Eng. 2017
- Pulse trains to percepts: the challenge of creating a perceptually intelligible world with sight recovery technologies. Fine I, Boynton GM. Proceedings of the Royal Society