About
22
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Introduction
My fundamental interest is in how our brains process complex patterns of noisy sensory information to generate stable representations of the world around us. Solving the problem of perceptual inference is essential for successful interaction with others and within one’s environment, and the primate visual system accomplishes it with remarkable ease. My research examines the neural circuits underlying visual processing of social information in the primate brain.
Current institution
Additional affiliations
July 2020 - present
July 2019 - June 2020
January 2015 - present
Education
August 2010 - October 2014
September 2009 - July 2010
October 2002 - August 2005
Publications
Publications (22)
Editor's Note: These short, critical reviews of recent papers in the Journal, written exclusively by graduate students or postdoctoral fellows, are intended to summarize the important findings of the paper and provide additional insight and commentary.
The posterior parietal cortex (PPC) is understood to be active when observers perceive three-dimensional (3D) structure. However, it is not clear how central this activity is in the construction of 3D spatial representations. Here, we examine whether PPC is essential for two aspects of visual depth perception by testing patients with lesions affect...
Significance
The primate brain is specialized for social interaction, and a complex network of brain regions supports this important function. Face perception is central to social development, and both humans and nonhuman primates exhibit a spontaneous viewing preference for faces. This shared involuntary response underscores the importance of face...
Background
Rhesus macaques are the most popular model species for studying the neural basis of visual face processing and social interaction using intracranial methods. However, the challenge of creating realistic, dynamic, and parametric macaque face stimuli has limited the experimental control and ethological validity of existing approaches.
New...
Neurons throughout the primate inferior temporal (IT) cortex respond selectively to visual images of faces and other complex objects. The response magnitude of neurons to a given image often depends on the size at which the image is presented, usually on a flat display at a fixed distance. While such size sensitivity might simply reflect the angula...
Primate social communication depends on the perceptual integration of visual and auditory cues, reflected in the multimodal mixing of sensory signals in certain cortical areas. The macaque cortical face patch network, identified through visual, face-selective responses measured with fMRI, is assumed to contribute to visual social interactions. Howe...
When we move the features of our face, or turn our head, we communicate changes in our internal state to the people around us. How this information is encoded and used by an observer's brain is poorly understood. We investigated this issue using a functional MRI adaptation paradigm in awake male macaques. Among face-selective patches of the superio...
As a first step in the development of a standardized face database for the macaque research community, we have rendered a stimulus set specifically for public release. The set consists of 14,000 static rendered conditions, saved as high resolution (3840 x 2160 pixels, 32-bit) RGBA images in .png format, as well as a smaller selection of short anima...
For social animals like primates, faces are a behaviourally important class of visual objects, and they exhibit statistical variation across multiple dimensions. Previous studies have typically investigated the selectivity of single neurons in the inferotemporal (IT) cortex of macaques to variation of one or two facial features at a time, such as i...
The pulvinar complex is the largest nucleus in the primate thalamus, and is reciprocally connected to virtually every region of the cortex. It can be divided into multiple neurochemically-defined nuclei and sub regions, which exhibit distinct patterns of cortical projections and collicular input. However, it remains unknown how this structural and...
The pulvinar is the largest nucleus of the primate thalamus. It is a complex structure whose various subregions exchange reciprocal connections with a wide array of visual and nonvisual cortical areas. It also receives input from subcortical structures, including the retina and superior colliculus, and sends projections to the amygdala. Despite con...
The visual system exploits past experience at multiple timescales to resolve perceptual ambiguity in the retinal image. For example, perception of a bistable stimulus can be biased toward one interpretation over another when preceded by a brief presentation of a disambiguated version of the stimulus (positive priming) or through intermittent presen...
The visual system exploits past experience at multiple timescales to resolve perceptual ambiguity in the retinal image. For example, perception of a bistable stimulus can be biased toward one interpretation over another when preceded by a brief presentation of a disambiguated version of the stimulus (positive priming) or through intermittent presen...
Reliable estimation of 3D surface orientation is critical for recognizing and interacting with complex 3D objects in our environment. Human observers maximize the reliability of their estimates of surface slant by integrating multiple depth cues. Texture and binocular disparity are two such cues, but they are qualitatively very different. Existing...
The visual system exploits multiple depth cues to achieve an accurate interpretation of the 3D environment. Psychophysical studies demonstrate that the integration of texture and disparity signals is near optimal, reducing variance when estimating surface slant. However, the cortical circuits responsible remain largely unknown. Here we test for cor...
Binocular disparity results from the subtle differences between the two eyes' views, and provides a powerful cue to the depth structure of the world around us. Disparity is widely conceptualized as having two types of signal: absolute disparity, which corresponds to the retinal distance of objects
Binocular disparity provides a powerful cue to depth structure that is important for both identifying and interacting with objects. Previous electrophysiological studies have located neurons tuned to disparity-defined surface curvature in both ventral (IT) and dorsal (IPS) processing pathways; however the cortical circuits mediating the perception...
The notoriously inconsistent effects of cannabinoids on anxiety-like behaviour may be explained by recent research on CB1 receptor knockout (CB1-KO) mice suggesting that cannabinoids exert bidirectional effects via the CB1 receptor (anxiolysis) and a novel rimonabant-sensitive neuronal cannabinoid receptor (anxiogenesis). This hypothesis is support...
The notoriously inconsistent effects of cannabinoids on anxiety-like behaviour may be explained by recent research on CB1 receptor knockout (CB1-KO) mice suggesting that cannabinoids exert bidirectional effects via the CB1 receptor (anxiolysis) and a novel rimonabant-sensitive neuronal cannabinoid receptor (anxiogenesis). This hypothesis is support...
