Research Interests

• Visual Preference: People prefer looking at some parts of the world over others, and these preferences influence a variety of choices we make every day. My primary research focus is to understand the nature and dynamics of these preferences.


• Neurobiology of an Infovore: Why do humans derive so much pleasure from acquiring new information? We propose that sensory systems have their own built-in motivational mechanisms for guiding attention to objects and locations of high interest. This link between perceptual mechanisms and affective responses may be mediated by a gradient of mu-opioid receptors (See "Perceptual Pleasure and the Brain", American Scientist, 2006). To date, this theory has been tested behaviorally and using brain imaging within the domain of visual preferences.


• Visual object & scene recognition: Humans are able to parse a scene into meaningful bits in only a fraction of a second. The ventral visual pathway in the human brain contains a number of interacting, heirarchically organized brain areas which support the analysis of visual form. Using behavioral and brain imaging techniques, I explore the representations, processes, and structures underlying this ability.


• Representations of sensations & knowledge: What are their cognitive structure, and how are they neurally implemented?


• Multi-modal sensory representations: how do we put together what we know about one "thing" from many senses & memories to create the impression of unity?


• Sensory development: How do the various sensory systems of the brain first learn about what is "out there", and how does the brain bootstrap its ability to interpret increasingly complex patterns during the course of development?


• Emotion and intellect: What purpose do emotions serve? Most likely, an "artificial intelligence" without emotion would not be very intelligent at all - it would lack the motivations necessary for novelty seeking behavior, it would lack the reward mechanisms necessary for learning, etc. I am interested in learning how it is that emotions have developed as necessary aspects of the human intellect.