Invited talk: Prof. Michael HERZOG, EPFL, Switzerland

When:
2019-06-04 at 10:30

Where:
Amphi Baillard - XV-XX

Details:

TITLE:
Crowding, Patterns & the Fundamentals of Vision

ABSTRACT:
In most models of vision, low level visual tasks are explained by low level neural mechanisms. For example, in crowding, perception of a target is impeded by nearby elements because, as proposed, responses of neurons coding for nearby elements are pooled. Indeed, performance deteriorated when a vernier stimulus was flanked by two lines, one on each side. However, performance improved strongly when the lines were extended to squares. Classic models cannot explain this uncrowding effect because the neighboring lines are part of the squares. I will show how these and other behavioral results challenge many common sense ideas about vision and propose a new framework based on Gestalt-like processing.

BIOSKETCH:
Michael Herzog studied Mathematics and Philosophy (Master) and received a Ph.D. in Biology from the University of Tübingen. After a post-doc at Caltech (Prof. Koch), he was a senior researcher at the University of Bremen. Since 2004, he is a professor for Psychophysics at the Brain Mind Institute at EPFL.