Vision and eye movements in natural environments

Organizers: Brian J. White & Douglas P. Munoz, Centre for Neuroscience Studies, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, Canada

Historically, the study of vision has largely been restricted to the use of simple stimuli in controlled tasks where observers are required to maintain stable gaze, or make stereotyped eye movements. This symposium presents some of the latest research aimed at understanding how the visual system behaves during unconstrained viewing of natural scenes, dynamic video, and real-world environments. Understanding how we perceive and act upon complex natural environments has potential to revolutionize our understanding of the brain, from machine vision and artificial intelligence to clinical applications such as the detection of visual or mental disorders and neuro-rehabilitation. More…

Beyond the FFA: The role of the ventral anterior temporal lobes in face processing

Organizer: Jessica Collins & Ingrid Olson, Temple University

Although accruing evidence has shown that face-selective patches in the ventral anterior temporal lobes (vATLs) are highly interconnected with the FFA and OFA, and that they play a necessary role in facial perception and identification, the contribution of these brain areas to the face-processing network remains elusive. The goal of this symposium is to bring together researchers from a variety of disciplines to address the following question: What is the functional role of the vATLs in face perception and memory, and how do they interact with the greater face network? More…

Mid-level representations in visual processing

Organizer: Jonathan Peirce, University of Nottingham

The majority of studies in vision science focus on the representation of low-level features, such as edges, color or motion processing, or on the representation of high-level constructs such as objects, faces and places. Surprisingly little work aims to understand the link between the two; the intermediate representations of “mid-level” vision. This symposium invites a series of speakers that have spent time working on mid-level vision to present their views on what those intermediate representations might be, of the problems that such processing must overcome, and the methods that we might use to understand them better. More…

The visual white-matter matters! Innovation, data, methods and applications of diffusion MRI and fiber tractography

Organizers: Franco Pestilli & Ariel Rokem, Stanford University

Many regions of the cerebral cortex are involved in visual perception and cognition. In this symposium, we will focus on the neuroanatomical connections between them. To study the visual white-matter connections, speakers in this symposium use diffusion MRI (dMRI), an imaging method that probes the directional diffusion of water. The talks will present studies of connectivity between visual processing streams, development of visual white matter, and the role of white matter in visual disorders. We will also survey publicly available resources available to the Vision Sciences community to extend the study of the visual white matter. More…

What are you doing? Recent advances in visual action recognition research.

Organizers: Stephan de la Rosa & Heinrich Bülthoff, Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics

Knowing what another person is doing by visually observing the other person’s actions (action recognition) is critical for human survival. Although humans often have little difficulty recognizing the actions of others, the underlying psychological and neural processes are complex. The understanding of these processes has not only implications for the scientific community but also for the development of man-machine interfaces, robots, and artificial intelligence. The current symposium summarizes recent scientific advances in the realm of action recognition by providing an integrative view on the processes underlying action recognition. More…

Understanding representation in visual cortex: why are there so many approaches and which is best?

Organizers: Thomas Naselaris & Kendrick Kay, Department of Neurosciences, Medical University of South Carolina & Department of Psychology, Washington University in St. Louis

Central to visual neuroscience is the problem of representation: what features of the visual world drive activity in the visual system? In recent years a variety of new methods for characterizing visual representation have been proposed. These include multivariate pattern analysis, representational similarity analysis, the use of abstract semantic spaces, and models of stimulus statistics. In this symposium, invitees will present recent discoveries in visual representation, explaining the generality of their approach and how it might be applicable to future studies. Through this forum we hope to move towards an integrative approach that can be shared across experimental paradigms. More…