Mapping Vision and Cognition in the Human Brain
This course covers the physical and neurovascular basis of the MRI signal and its statistical analysis. The class will discuss both classical fMRI papers and recent advances and how they relate to our understanding of vision and cognition.
Term: Winter
Course Overview
How do we perceive the world that we live in? As vision is the dominant sense in humans it is not surprising that numerous regions in the brain respond to the visual input that arrives at our eyes. The aim of the seminar is to discuss experimental research investigating the complex processing in the brain that underlies the rich visual experience that we enjoy so naturally and effortlessly. Functional neuroimaging is one of the most powerful tools for understanding vision and cognition in humans. The seminar starts off with a primer on how neuroimaging data are measured and how they are analysed. Equipped with this fundamental understanding, the seminar then turns to the functional organisation of the visual brain, how it computes various aspects of visual experience such as colour, motion, recognition of objects and faces, and how cognitive factors such as attention, consciousness, prior knowledge and expectation interact with the vision process. The literature used in the seminar comprises both classical papers that proved highly influential for the research field and more recent papers that cover modern advances and that anticipate possible future directions.
Learning goals
Students will learn about…
- basic physical and neurovascular principles underlying the MRI signal
- MRI analysis from preprocessing to statistical inference
- some basics of human vision science
- present, discuss, evaluate original neuroimaging papers
- both classic fMRI papers and (some) recent developments
Requirements
Presentation of a paper (graded) + hand-out, presence and active participation!
Literature
- “Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging” by Scott A. Huettel, Allen W. Song, and Gregory McCarthy
- “Functional magnetic resonance imaging” by Andreas Bartels, Jozien Goense, and Nikos Logothetis in (Handbook of Neural Activity Measurement)
- “What we can do and what we cannot do with fMRI” by Nikos K. Logothetis
- “Foundations of Vision” by Frank Tong (Stevens’ Handbook of Experimental Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience)