This course will consider both classical and modern theories that relate biological sensory systems to ecological context and behavioral function. Readings will be drawn from systems neurophysiology, neuroethology, computational theory, psychophysics and cognitive psychology.
Examples topics: Unconscious Inference, Gestalt Theory, Natural Scene Statistics, Redundancy Reduction, Ecological Theory of Perception, Indirect Theory of Perception, Perception as Bayesian Inference. Example readings: Helmholtz; Mach; Pearson; Craik; Wertheimer & Wertheimer; Attneave; Barlow; Purves; Gibson; Rock; Knill; Richards; and selections from the current research literature emphasizing neurophysiological evidence supporting or contradicting these theories.
Credit: 4.0U, (1.5h 2ce a week + computer lab 1ce/week) Letter grade
Prereq: NEU200B; CSE 5A or permission of instructor.
The structure of this class is uniquely designed to train predoctoral students diverse skills for interdisciplinary teaching in quantitative biology. The graded assignments will be as follows:
1) Lecturing and discussion leading: Each student must present one 45min lecture and lead a 45min class discussion of a reading assigned by the student. (These presentations together make up 12 of the class meetings).
2) Didactic writing: Each student must write a one-page concise overview and a 5-page textbook entry on a delimited subtopic. Writing style and level should be comparable to Kandel Jessel & Schwartz ‘Neuroscience’, a TINS review, or a Scientific American article.
3) Computer teaching tools: Each student must write one simple computer simulation in Matlab that illustrates a mathematical point relevant to the topic of the class. The final product can either be an interactive tutorial, a set of illustrative graphs or figures, or an educational webpage, as determined by individual meetings between student and instructor. Computer lab, run by TA, will be for the purpose of introducing Matlab programming and working on these projects.
4) Syllabus development: The last two classes will be devoted to collaboratively developing a syllabus for an upper-level undergraduate online course on the same topic as that year’s class (topics change each time course is offered). The syllabus will be built around the chapters and computer materials developed by students during the quarter. The resulting materials will be published on the web (computer lab project).
Indirect Perception
(Hardcover) by Irvin Rock (Author)
The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception
(Paperback) by James Jerome Gibson (Author)
Why We See What We Do: An Empirical Theory of Vision
(Paperback) by Dale Purves (Author), R. Beau Lotto (Author)
Active Vision
(Paperback) by Findlay and Gilchrist (Authors).
Computational Neuroscience of Vision
(Paperback) by Edmund T. Rolls (Author), Gustavo Deco (Author)
Review articles and readings from the original literature
(Misc. authors)