The research in our lab spans an interdisciplinary cross-section of engineering, psychology, and neuroscience. We have studied visual perception and visual neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience, computational neuroscience, computer vision, image processing, computer graphics, AI, artificial neural networks, and data science.
Current research is focused on understanding the computations performed by neural circuits in the brain. There is considerable evidence that the brain relies on a set of canonical neural computations, repeating them across brain regions and modalities to apply operations of the same form, but we lack a theoretical framework for how such canonical computations can support a wide variety of cognitive processes, brain functions, and neural systems. The field of neuroscience needs a general theory of brain function, like Maxwell's Equations for the brain. We are developing such a theoretical framework. The theory offers a unified framework for the dynamics of neural activity, and it recapitulates many key neurophysiological and cognitive/perceptual phenomena (including sensory processing and attention in visual cortex, and working memory in prefrontal cortex), measured with a wide range of methodologies (including intracellular recordings of membrane potential fluctuations, firing rates of individual neurons, optogenetic manipulations, local field potentials, neuroimaging, and behavioral performance).
David Heeger, Professor of Psychology and Neural Science, New York University
Computational Neuroscience
- A dynamic normalization model of temporal attention
- An image-computable model on how endogenous and exogenous attention differentially alter visual perception
- A recurrent circuit implements normalization, simulating the dynamics of V1 activity
- Oscillatory Recurrent Gated Neural Integrator Circuits (ORGaNICs), a unifying theoretical framework for neural dynamics
- Position-theta-phase model of hippocampal place cell activity applied ot quantification of running speed modulation of firing rate
- Attention Model of Binocular Rivalry
- Theory of Cortical Function
- Pattern adaptation and normalization reweighting
- Deconstructing interocular suppression: Attention and divisive normalization
- A model of binocular rivalry and cross-orientation suppression
- Normalization as a canonical neural computation
- The normalization model of attention
- A synaptic explanation of suppression in visual cortex
- Representing retinal image speed in visual cortex
- Linearity and normalization of simple cells of the macaque primary visual cortex
- A Model of neuronal responses in visual area MT
- Contrast normalization and a linear model for the directional selectivity of simple cells in catstriate cortex
- Comparison of contrast normalization and hard threshold models of the responses of simple cells in cat striate cortex
- Modelling binocular neurons in the primary visual cortex
- Modeling the apparent frequency-specific suppressioan in simple cell responses
- Computational models of cortical visual processing
- Encoding of binocular disparity: energy models, position shifts and phase shifts
- Linearity and gain control in V1 simple cells
- The representation of visual stimuli in primary visual cortex
- Summation and division by neurons in visual cortex
- Modeling simple cell direction selectivity with normalized, half-squared, linear operators
- Model of visual motion sensing
- Normalization of cell responses in cat striate cortex
- Half-squaring in responses of cat striate cells
- Nonlinear model of neural eesponses in cat visual cortex
- Model for the extraction of image flow
Human Vision/Psychophysics
- Long-term Motor Learning in the Wild with High Volume Video Game Data
- A unified model of the task-evoked pupil response
- Heading perception depends on time-varying evolution of optic flow
- Perceptual learning in autism: over-specificity and possible remedies
- Over-responsiveness and greater variability in roughness perception in autism
- No difference in cross-modal attention or sensory discrimination thresholds in autism and matched controls
- Free viewing in infants and adults
- Suppressive interactions underlying visually evoked fixational saccades
- Deconstructing interocular suppression: Attention and divisive normalization
- Interactions between voluntary and involuntary attention modulate the quality and temporal dynamics of visual processing
- Spontaneous microsaccades reflect shifts in covert attention
- Attention enhances contrast appearance via increased baseline of neural responses
- Motion-induced blindness and Troxler fading: common and different mechanisms
- Can binocular rivalry reveal neural correlates of consciousness?
- Exogenous spatial attention: Evidence for intact functioning in adults with autism spectrum disorder
- A functional and perceptual signature of the second visual area in primates
- Endogenous spatial attention: evidence for intact functional in adults with autism
- Normal binocular rivalry in autism: Implications for the excitation/inhibition hypothesis
- Feature-based attention enhances performance by increasing response gain
- Responses to second-order texture modulations undergo surround suppression
- Temporal eye movement strategies during naturalistic viewing
- Motion-induced blindness and microsaccades: cause and effect
- When size matters: attention affects performance by contrast or response gain
- Modulation of spatiotemporal dynamics of binocular rivalry by collinear facilitation and pattern-dependent adaptation
- Periodic Perturbations producing phase-locked fluctuations in visual perception
- Spatiotemporal mechanisms for detecting and identifying image features in human vision
- Measurement and modeling of center-surround suppression and enhancement
- Center-surround interactions in foveal and peripheral vision
- Psychophysical evidence for a magnocellular pathway deficit in dyslexia
- Perceptual image distortion
- Functional segregation of color and motion perception examined in motion nulling
- Model of visual motion sensing
Autism
- Perceptual learning in autism: over-specificity and possible remedies
- Over-responsiveness and greater variability in roughness perception in autism
- No difference in cross-modal attention or sensory discrimination thresholds in autism and matched controls
- Differential sensory fMRI signatures in autism and schizophrenia: analysis of amplitude and trial-to-trial variability
- Neural variability: Friend or Foe?
- Cortical variability in the sensory-evoked response in autism
- Exogenous spatial attention: Evidence for intact functioning in adults with autism spectrum disorder
- Endogenous spatial attention: evidence for intact functional in adults with autism
- Normal binocular rivalry in autism: Implications for the excitation/inhibition hypothesis
- Unreliable evoked responses in autism
- Normal movement selectivity in autism
- A mirror up to nature
Image Processing, Computer Graphics, and Computer Vision
- Robust multiresolution alignment of MRI brain volumes
- Robust anisotropic diffusion.
- Embedding invisible information in color images.
- Comparison of approaches to egomotion computation
- Image enhancement using polymer grid triode arrays
- Pyramid based texture analysis/synthesis
- Perceptual image distortion
- Linear subspace methods for recovering translation direction
- Subspace methods for recovering rigid motion I: algorithm and implementation
- Shiftable multi-scale transforms
- Motion without movement
- Probability distributions of optical flow
- Visual perception of three-dimensional motion
- Optical flow using spatiotemporal filters
- Model for the extraction of image flow
Functional Brain Imaging
- Stimulus vignetting and orientation selectivity in human visual cortex
- Differential sensory fMRI signatures in autism and schizophrenia: analysis of amplitude and trial-to-trial variability
- Normalization in human somatosensory cortex
- The neural processing of hierarchical structure in music and speech at different timescales
- Cortical variability in the sensory-evoked response in autism
- Long-range traveling waves of activity triggered by local dichoptic stimulation in V1 of behaving monkeys
- Motion direction biases and decoding in human visual cortex
- Coarse-scale biases for spirals and orientation in human visual cortex
- Categorical Clustering of the Neural Representation of Color
- A functional and perceptual signature of the second visual area in primates
- Modulation of visual responses by gaze direction in human visual cortex
- Continuous flash suppression modulates cortical activity in early visual cortex
- Retinotopic patterns of correlated fluctuations in visual cortex reflect the dynamics of spontaneous perceptual suppression
- Unreliable evoked responses in autism
- Influence of meditation on anti-correlated networks in the brain
- Attentional enhancement via selection and pooling of early sensory responses in human visual cortex
- Cross-orientation suppression in human visual cortex
- Inter-area correlations in the ventral visual pathway reflect feature integration
- Human primary visual cortex (V1) is selective for second-order spatial frequency
- Orientation decoding depends on maps not columns
- When size matters: attention affects performance by contrast or response gain
- Orientation selectivity of motion-boundary responses in human visual cortex
- Differential roles for the frontal eye fields (FEFs) and intraparietal sulcus (IPS) in visual working memory and visual attention
- Modulation of spatiotemporal dynamics of binocular rivalry by collinear facilitation and pattern-dependent adaptation
- Syntactic structure building in the anterior temporal lobe during natural story listening
- Normal movement selectivity in autism
- Reliability of cortical activity during natural stimulation
- Top-down flow of visual spatial attention signals from parietal to occipital cortex
- Decoding and reconstructing color from responses in human visual cortex
- Inter-ocular contrast normalization in human visual cortex
- The role of early visual cortex in visual short-term memory and visual attention
- Executed and observed movements have different distributed representations in human aIPS
- Opposite neural signatures of motion-induced blindness in human dorsal and ventral visual cortex
- BOLD and spiking activity - a comment on Viswanathan and Freeman
- Maps of visual space in human occipital cortex are retinotopic, not spatiotopic
- Neurocinematics: The neuroscience of films
- A hierarchy of temporal receptive windows in human cortex
- A mirror up to nature
- Hierarchy of responses underlying binocular rivalry
- Brain areas selective for both observed and executed movements
- Rapid and precise retinotopic mapping of visual cortex obtained by voltage sensitive dye in the behaving monkey
- Specificity of human cortical areas for reaches and saccades
- Orientation-selective adaptation to illusory countours in human visual cortex
- The effect of large veins on spatial localization with GE BOLD at 3T: displacement, not blurring
- Neural correlates of sustained spatial attention in human early visual cortex
- Two retinotopic visual areas in human lateral occipital cortex
- Neural correlates of the visual vertical meridian asymmetry
- Sustained activity in topographic areas of human posterior parietal cortex during memory-guided saccades
- Orientation-selective adaptation to first- and second-order patterns in human visual cortex
- Topographic maps of visual spatial attention in human parietal cortex
- Topographic organization for delayed saccades in human posterior parietal cortex
- Traveling waves of activity in primary visual cortex during binocular rivalry
- Sterescopic processing of absolute and relative disparity in human visual cortex
- Response suppression in V1 agrees with psychophysics of surround masking
- Neuronal correlates of perception in early visual cortex
- Retinotopy and functional subdivision of human areas MT and MST
- What does fMRI tell us about neuronal activity?
- Pattern-motion responses in human visual cortex
- Neuronal basis of the motion aftereffect reconsidered
- Human cortical activity correlates with stereoscopic depth perception
- Neuronal activity in human primary visual cortex correlates with perception during binocular rivalry
- Activity in primary visual cortex predicts performance in a visual detection task
- Spikes versus BOLD: what does neuroimaging tell us about neuronal activity?
- Task-related modulation of visual cortex
- Robust multiresolution alignment of MRI brain volumes
- Motion opponency in visual cortex
- Linking visual perception with human brain activity
- Spatial attention affects brain activity in human primary visual cortex
- FMR imaging of early visual pathways in dyslexia
- Neural basis of contrast discrimination
- Brain activity in visual cortex predicts individual differences in reading performance
- Linear systems analysis of fMRI in human V1