The Shape of Our Thoughts (Visual Perception of Geometric Shape)

Most people think that "seeing" is something that happens in the eyes, but many aspects of our perception of the world are determined by neural computations that occur in the brain. The visual cortex - the part of the brain that processes vision - takes up nearly a third of our cerebral real estate. Different regions of the visual cortex respond to different aspects or features of visual stimuli. I will (briefly) go over a few examples of deficits that can occur when parts of the visual cortex are damaged, and I will discuss my own work, which shows how intermediate visual processing areas in the visual cortex respond to variation in object silhouettes and 3D surface orientations.

Room 100

Speaker: Mark Lescroart