Welcome to the Perception and Cognition Lab at the University of California, San Diego. We are based in the Department of Psychology, but also participate in the Graduate Program in Neuroscience and the Institute for Neural Computation.
Our research focuses on understanding how behavioral goals influence perception and decision making. Perception is thought to be based on the activity of sensory neurons that receive input from the world around us (in the form of light, sound, etc.). However, sensory neurons are very noisy and unreliable, so small groups of these neurons must work together to support stable perceptual representations. In addition, a combination of factors such as prior experiences, current expectations, and behavioral goals influence the activity of sensory neurons to bias perception in favor of the most important objects in the environment. What we experience is therefore not merely a product of the raw sensory input, but is instead a product of the sensory input and the internal state of the observer. To investigate the influence of behavioral goals and previous experiences on perception and decision making, we employ a combination of psychophysics, computational modeling, and neuroimaging techniques with the general goal of understanding a mechanism at many levels of description.
Recent Announcements
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"Estimating the influence of attention on population codes in human visual cortex using voxel-based tuning functions" wins Editors Choice award from Neuroimage (Systems Neuroscience category)
Posted Jun 11, 2009 11:41 PM by Perception Lab
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New Paper: Domain general mechanisms of perceptual decision making in human cortex
Tiffany Ho, Scott Brown, John Serences, Journal of Neuroscience
AbstractTo successfully interact with objects in the environment, sensory evidence must be continuously acquired, interpreted, and used to guide appropriate ...
Posted Jun 4, 2009 11:08 AM by Perception Lab
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New Paper: Area Spt in the Human Planum Temporale Supports Sensory-Motor Integration for Speech Processing
Processing incoming sensory information and transforming this input into appropriatemotor responses is a critical and ongoing aspect of our moment-to-moment interactionwith the environment. While the neural ...
Posted Feb 24, 2009 10:38 AM by Perception Lab
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Poster at SfN 2008
Sameer presented a poster at SfN 2008 in Washington DC titled "Estimating the influence of spatial attention in human visual cortex using voxel-based tuning functions". Poster reprint can be ...
Posted Nov 25, 2008 4:24 PM by Perception Lab
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New paper: Value-based modulations in human visual cortex
Economists and cognitive psychologists have long
known that prior rewards bias decision making in favor of options with high
expected value. Accordingly, value modulates the activity of sensorimotor neurons
involved ...
Posted Dec 30, 2008 10:13 PM by Perception Lab
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