Psychophysics and the Brain

Weizmann Institute of Science, Feinberg Graduate School course # 20043071

Tues 14:00-16:00, Semester 1, AY 2003-2004

LOCATION !!!

Instructor: Nava Rubin

Note: make sure to reload this page every time you return to it, since I will be adding links to reading material, as well as revise the reading lists (and possibly the syllabus itself).

General Description: What roles do behavioral studies play in the quest to understand brain function? We will examine various answers to this question by reviewing a wide range of behavioral studies of Sensation, Perception, Learning, Memory and Cognition. (Many, but not all of the studies will be from the domain of vision.)

Course Requirements (may be revised): The course will be combined from instructor lectures and student presentations. Each student will give one presentation (1 hr) about behavioral experiment(s) that inform us about brain function. These presentations need not be restricted to vision: they can be from the student's research domain or from another domain s/he is interested in. In addition, students will submit a final paper (2500 words max) about a topic that they chose in cooperation with the instructor. Grade will be based on class participation, presentation and final paper in equal parts.

Syllabus (Revised: March 11, 2004)

The topics below are numbered serially from 1 to 12, in the order they will be covered. The current, ‘rough’ plan is to cover one topic per meeting; the actual pace will be influenced by the level of participants’ interest, class discussions etc.

In the first meeting we will: - discuss the course aims, syllabus, selection of material and format; - cover as much as time allows from Topic 1, and close with a couple of demos to ‘ease our way’ into Topic 2.

I). Sensation [Handout]

1). • Weber, Fechner, and the scaling of JNDs; sensory transfer functions (see also III-7, Adaptation)

• Helmholtz-Young, Hering and the neural basis of color sensation; the concept of ‘metamers’ (metamers, also in motion; other modalities?)

• General observation(s):

- The sensory systems are geared towards detection of gradients, in space and time

- High performance in relative measurements (‘discrimination’), low performance in absolute measurements (‘classification’, ‘rating’)

• The distinction(s) between Sensation and Perception: a dichotomy?

[no assigned readings.]

II). Perception/Perceptual Organization

Setting the stage: the legacy of Gestalt psychology [Handout]

2). • The Gestalt approach to studying Perception

- Reaction to: ‘structuralism’/‘atomism’; ‘reductionism’

^↑ ‘organization’ ^↑ ‘isomorphism’

- Phenomenology (‘observations’; stress that they were the first to point out un-obvious perceptual phenomena which were later formulated as ‘computational problems’ that the brain solves: e.g., the correspondence problem [Ternus], the aperture problem [Stumpf/Wallach], ‘border ownership; [E Rubin])

[demos from: {Wertheimer, 1923/1950 #1; Rubin, 1915/1958 #2; Ternus, 1950 #3; Duncker, 1929/1950 #4; Kanizsa, 1976 #5; Kanizsa, 1979 #6; Wallach, 1935 #7; Wuerger, 1996 #8; Berliner, 1948 #9; Rock, 1964 #10}]

- Ideology (contrast: subjective-objective; introspection-experimentation; qualitative-quantitative; MORE FROM KANIZSA CHAPTER 3)

[readings: {Yantis, 2001 #11; Wertheimer, 1923/1950 #1; Rubin, 1915/1958 #2; Kanizsa, 1979 #13; Kanizsa, 1979 #14}; see also {Koffka, 1935 #12; Nakayama, 1994 #15} ADD Ullman’s “against”?]

Modern Approaches to linking perception and physiology [Handout]

3). • The first wave (late 60’s – present)

- Spatial frequency and orientation channels

- Relation to electrophysiological findings

- Fourier analysis, linear systems analysis

[readings: {Graham, 1971 #16; Piotrowski, 1982 #17}; see also {Blakemore, 1972 #18; Burbeck, 1987 #19}]

• ‘Psychoanatomy’ [readings: {Blake, 1994 #20; Polat, 1993 #22; Adini, 2001 #23}]

• ‘Neo-Gestalt’ [reading: { Shimojo, 1989 #24; Nakayama, 1995 #21}] Inc. “the receptive field dogma” vs. “context effects”; specific example of Figure/ground (anticipate ‘border ownership’, von der Heydt, most generally Segmentation) ADD: Weisstein 1970; ‘Other’?? (Bayesian, MORE??)

4). • Global motion perception [readings TBA XXXX]

5). • Perceptual bi-stability [readings: {Levelt, 1965 #25; Blake, 1989 #26; Logothetis, 1996 #27; Kovacs, 1996 #28}; see also {Sheinberg, 1997 #31; Tong, 1998 #29; Tong, 2001 #30; Blake, 2002 #32}]

Discussion item: should we make a distinction between when an “illusion” indicates a limitation of the system and when it “makes sense”?

III). Short-term plasticity: Aftereffects, Adaptation and Priming

6). • Revisit Weber & Fechner: Gain control [reading: Shapley 1990]XXXX Synaptic Depression and Cortical Gain Control: Abbott et al

• Adaptation and aftereffects: orientation (‘tilt’), color, motion [readings TBA XXXX] (predicted/anticipated: motion is a “fundamental sense”, derived “directly”, i.e., not from consciously-available dx, dt.)

• Active vs. Passive accounts of adaptation (Is adaptation an: artifacts, or does it have function?; LOOK FOR: lit re “adaptation as an active process”)

Check out Ben Backus: http://psych.upenn.edu/backuslab

7). • Priming [readings TBAXXXX]

IV). Long-term plasticity: Learning and Memory

8). • Classical conditioning [readings TBA xx DUDAI? xx]

• ‘The organization of behavior’: Hebb and the neural basis of learning; rote learning vs. insight [reading: {Hebb, 1949 #34; Rock, 1957 #35; Epstein, 1984 #36} GET BOOK !!!]

9). • Generalization (‘transfer’) vs. specificity of learning

- Perceptual learning [readings: {Ramachandran, 1973 #37; Sagi, 1994 #38; Jeo, 1995 #39; Walsh, 1997 #40}; see also {Ramachandran, 1976 #41; Karni, 1991 #42; Ahissar, 1995 #43; Mollon, 1996 #44; Ahissar, 1997 #46; Rubin, 1997 #45}]

- Problem solving [readings: {Gentner, 1997 #47}; see also {Holyoak, 1987 #48; Rubin, 1989 #49}]

10). • Experimentally-induced, large-scale plasticity in visuo-motor integration: visual-field-inverting goggles.

Primary readings:

{Kohler, 1964 #53} [PDF (10.5M)]

{Sugita, 1994 #55} [PDF (1.1M)]; {Sugita, 1996 #56} [PDF (0.2M)]

Additional readings:

{Kohler, 1962 #52} [PDF (2.5M)]

{Shimojo, 1981 #54} [PDF (2.2M)]

Of historical interest:

{Stratton, 1896 #50} [PDF (0.5M)]; {Stratton, 1897 #51} [PDF (3.7M)]

- Prisms and the perception of ‘straight’ and ‘curved’ [readings: GibsonXXXX ADD REF: From: edward vessel <vessel@usc.edu> Subject: Non-Accidental-Properties reference; Kayaert, Biederman, and Vogels (2003), Shape Tuning in Macaque Inferior Temporal Cortex, The Journal of Neuroscience, April 1, • 23(7):3016 –3027]

V).Cognitive-level phenomena

11). • The word superiority effect (context « lateral and feedback interactions) [readings: {Reicher, 1969 #57; Mcclelland, 1981 #58; Weisstein, 1974 #59}; see also {Rumelhart, 1982 #60; Klein, 1978 #61; Earhard, 1980 #63; Gorea, 1990 #66}]

• The Stroop effect (response competition) [readings TBA]

VI). Other:

12). Developmental behavioral studies

OR:

Neuropsychology: behavioral characterization of the damaged/abnormal brain (Broca/Wernicke; Holmes; Geschwind; Milner; Warrington, Marr...)

(to be determined in class discussion)