Neuroscience and Cognitive Science (NACS) Colloquium Series

Speaker: Dr. Nicole Rust (Psychology, UPenn)
Title: "Deciphering the Neural Representation of Objects Using Population-Based Approaches"
Date: April 21
Time: 3:30pm
Place: 1208 Bioscience Research Building (BRB) 

[Note: this colloquium is coordinated with the NACS colloquium on April 22, at which the speaker will be Alan Stocker from UPenn.]

Abstract:

While popular accounts suggest that neurons at the highest stages of the visual system are selective for particular objects, the average neuron at the highest stage of purely visual processing, inferotemporal (IT) cortex, is in fact broadly tuned for natural images. Exactly how the IT population represents objects remains little-understood. In this talk, I will begin by presenting evidence that IT neurons are in fact more selective for conjunctions of visual features than neurons at earlier stages. However, these increases in selectivity are offset by increases in invariance to identity-preserving transformations (e.g. shifting, scaling) of those features such that IT neurons erroneously appear to be no more selective than neurons at earlier stages of visual processing (e.g. V4). Moreover, these results suggest that the neural representation of objects is highly distributed across the IT population. In the second portion of the talk, I will describe how we use population-based approaches to understand the nature of the object representation in IT. As time permits, I will also explain how IT object representations are modulated by cognitive factors, such as the act of searching for a particular object (such as a face in a crowd).


Those wishing to meet with Dr Rust before the seminar on Thursday or during Friday are invited to contact <pcarruth@umd.edu>

The seminar schedule is available at http://www.nacs.umd.edu/news/seminars.cfm

Upcoming seminars and events:April 22: Dr. Alan Stocker, University of Pennsylvania

April 29: Dr. Ranulfo Romo, University of Mexico