Title: How Does the Primate Brain Support Visual Scene Understanding and Object Recognition?

Speaker: Anitha Pasupathy, University of Washington
 
Abstract: Human and nonhuman primates rely heavily on their visual system to make critical decisions in daily life. When a monkey swings through the rainforest, or when humans manipulate objects, interpret facial expressions, or look skyward to assess the rain clouds, detailed processing of a visual scene is important. In the primate brain, this is based on information processing along the ventral visual pathway. In my talk, I will describe what is currently known about visual processing. But much remains unknown and I will discuss the experiments being conducted to address outstanding questions.

Profile: Anitha Pasupathy received her Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology in her home town of Chennai, India, and then earned a Master's degree in Electrical Engineering at McGill University, Montreal, Canada. For her Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering at the Johns Hopkins University, Anitha investigated the representational basis of neuronal responses in area V4, an intermediate cortical stage in the ventral visual stream of the macaque monkey. Her work established boundary curvature as a basis for shape encoding in the primate brain. As a postdoctoral fellow at MIT, she studied the dynamical interactions between prefrontal cortex and the basal ganglia during visuomotor learning. In her own lab at the University of Washington, where she has been since 2006, Anitha uses single and multi-contact electrode recordings, perturbation of neuronal circuits with cortical cooling, behavioral manipulations and computational models to understand the neural basis of visual perception. Anitha is dedicated to training the next generation of scientists and she co-directs an institutional training grant from the NEI at the University of Washington. She is also passionate about science advocacy—she has served on NIH study sections both as member and chair, and on the animal care and use committee at her university. 

Language: English

Target audience: General audience/everyone at OIST and beyond.
Freely accessible to all OIST members and guests without registration.

This talk will also be broadcast online via Zoom:
Zoom link
Meeting ID: 990 8408 5821
Passcode: 070654

※ Please note that this event may be recorded and the videos uploaded. In addition, photos may be taken during the event. These are intended for publication online (the OIST website, social media, etc.)※