Speaker: Dr. Gerrit Maus

Title:  Predictive Localisation in the Visual System

Date: Friday 18 March, 1-2 pm 

Venue: AS4/02-08 (Psychology Department Meeting Room) 

Abstract:

Localizing objects in the environment is one of the primary functions of the visual system. Dynamic environments with constantly moving objects pose serious problems to the visual system because of slow information transmission and processing in the brain. To overcome processing delays and to enable successful interaction with objects, the brain needs to predict the positions of moving objects. I will present evidence from psychophysics, neuroimaging, and transcranial magnetic stimulation experiments, demonstrating how predictive mechanisms in visual cortex facilitate accurate perceptual localization of moving objects. The oculomotor system can also adapt and automatically correct for object displacements, when a target object moves predictably during eye blinks. Taken together, my research shows how the visual system employs predictive mechanisms to correct for processing delays and localization errors.

About the Speaker:

 Dr. Gerrit Maus studied Cognitive Science at the University of Osnabrück and got his PhD at the University of Sussex in Brighton, UK. During this time he visited the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt to begin fMRI studies of the visual cortex. After that, Gerrit worked in California for 7 years, first at the Center for Mind and Brain at UC Davis, and then at UC Berkeley. He has also spent time at the University of Glasgow, at the Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute in San Francisco and at the Laboratoire Psychologie de la Perception in Paris. Since October 2015 he is an Assistant Professor at Nanyang Technological University.