Cognitive Neuroscience: Vision

Decision, categorization. Bayesian inference, working memory, attention, cognitive control, conscious perception and awareness. The neural basis for all of these cognitive functions have been extensively studied in the domain of vision. Why vision? Because a great deal of scientific inquiry has delineated both the behavioral and physiological aspects of basic sensory processing in vision. Because of this, cognitive neuroscience questions can be precisely formulated in the context of vision. As a result we have some of the best answers to the question of what neural mechanisms underlie cognitive functions in the domain of vision. The course will combine lectures, in-depth discussions of primary literature and computer tutorials to develop key concepts in the neuroscience of vision and how these concepts have been built on to understand the neural basis of higher cognition. Familiarity with Python (or willingness to self-learn) at the level of being able to plot data and write equations from papers to simulate key aspects of vision models will be needed for computer tutorials.