Achievement

Trainee Alan Robinson completed two research projects investigating the temporal dynamics of brightness perception and the representation of surfaces in early visual cortex. These projects were inspired by results from an earlier computational modeling project completed by IGERT trainees Alan Robinson and Paul Hammon that attempted to explain human brightness perception with a simple, neurally plausible model. This model suggested that brightness perception is the result of very early parts of the brain, and, as such, should occur very rapidly. This year, Alan showed psychophysically that brightness perception is indeed quite rapid. He also showed (using a novel flicker adaptation paradigm developed with IGERT faculty Don MacLeod and Virginia de Sa) that there is no evidence of a propagating of brightness information. Together, these three projects (two published, and the third submitted for publication) advance our understanding of how information is represented in early visual areas.