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CFIN/MIB talk: Dr Samuel Schwarzkopf

Dr Samuel Schwarzkopf from University College London gives talk on how subjective perception arise in visual cortex

11.07.2016 | Hella Kastbjerg

Dato man 05 sep
Tid 13:30 14:30
Sted Meeting room 5th floor, Building 10G, Aarhus University Hospital, Nørrebrogade

Dr Samuel Schwarzkopf
Experimental Psychology & Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience University College London London, United Kingdom

Title:
How does subjective perception arise in visual cortex?

Abstract:
Since the beginning of psychophysical studies of the human visual system it has been known that the perceived size of visual objects varies dramatically between, and even within, individuals. Moreover, previous research suggests that the early visual cortex encodes perceived rather than retinal object size. A series of experiments in my lab tested the hypothesis that the brain infers size from this cortical representation.

Using population receptive field analysis we studied idiosyncrasies in the topographical cortical architecture of area V1 to understand how subjective perceptual experience arises. To do so we further developed efficient behavioural methods for mapping perceptual biases across the visual field. Our results support a population read-out model that posits that size is determined by the position and spread of neural activity within the retinotopic map.

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