Seminar: Concepts in Visual Neuroscience - PSY 522A & 426

GOAL & TOPICS

The goal is to familiarize with concepts, ideas and hypotheses in neuroscience with a focus on vision. Topics: neuron models, processing image structure (retina-primary visual cortex), object recognition (V2-IT-prefrontal cortex), motion detection, attention.

Abstract:
This seminar will provide an overview of contemprory theories, concepts and models in neuroscience, with an emphasis on vision. It will outline the different approaches that are used to understand neural information processing in the visual system. Some time will be spent discussing contemporary trends in neuroscience, along with the contributions from and influences of multiple relevant disciplines, including psychology, biology, and artificial intelligence. A central argument will be that there is still no coherent framework or single concept of neural processing.

FORMAT

The topics will be introduced by lectures. A wealthy manuscript will be handed out containing graphs and texts from various introductory books. Students are asked to give presentations on classic or recent research papers or reviews based on the presented material.

EXAMPLE READING

The following are nice reviews of current debates in visual system neuroscience, often containing a philosophical introduction. The reviews may seem long, but we can also focus on just a part of it. And there are also plenty of other interesting papers.

Albright and Stoner, 2002: on contextual influences in visual processing.
deCharms and Zador, 2000: on cortical (neural) codes and representations.
Ferster and Miller, 2000: on mechanisms of orientation selectivity in visual cortex.
Glimcher, 2003: on saccadic decision making.
Kastner and Ungerleider, 2003: on visual attention.

Full list of suggested reading.

PREREQUISITES

None. It is advantageous though to have heard about neurons or the brain a little bit.

TIME & LOCATION

Tuesdays and Thursdays from 0930-1045. Haggar Hall, 128.
Starting Tuesday, January the 13th.

ORGANIZER/LECTURER

Christoph Rasche (M. Wenger's lab)
227 D, Haggar Hall
crasche@nd.edu


Christoph Rasche
Last modified: Tue Dec 9 12:32:59 EST 2003