• wednesday, 4 may 2022—12:15

    The nature of mid-level representations in visual processing inferred from the study of a woman with a highly specific developmental visual disorder

    Gilles Vannuscorps, UCLouvain

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    Although all objects around us shift and turn on our retinas when we move or turn our head, phenomenologically they remain in the same position and orientation. This implies that what we consciously perceive results from the transformation of the initial 2-dimensional images that strike our retinas into a mental representation whereby objects are located and oriented relative to each other and/or to environmental axes. Much remains to be learned about the nature of the mechanisms involved in transforming retinotopic into spatiotopic representations of the environment. Progress in this direction is hindered by the complexity of the interactions among multiple levels of representation in the visual system, making it difficult to isolate and study the nature of one particular intermediate level. Nature occasionally provides the opportunity to peer inside complex neural systems by isolating components of a system through accidental damage or genetic modification of neural components. In this talk, I will present the main results from the study of a young woman presenting with a highly specific developmental visual disorder that provided such an opportunity. I will present the data and rationale that led us to several new conclusions about the operations involved in the transformation of an initial retinotopic representation of objects into the spatiotopic representation we experience.

    external seminar