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Computational
modeling of recurrent interactions.
How do the cortical areas and layers interact with each other to produce
cognitive behavior? With computational models one can study and compute the
dynamics and complexity of the cerebral cortex in detail; something what cannot
be done in awake, behaving animals. The general goal of this project is
therefore to study the interactions between the cortical layers and areas by
means of computational modeling.
Role
of eye movements for 3D perception.
The visual system processes sensory information in such a way that perceived
size and shape of an object remain constant despite distortions of the retinal
image (shape constancy). This project aims to understand how the visual brain
solves this inverse problem, i.e. to recover the shape and orientation of an
object in a 3D space from a 2D retinal projected image.
Role
of visual areas in figure-ground segregation.
Figure-ground refers to humans` ability to separate elements based upon
contrast and is the foundation of visual perception. This segmentation process
is under the control of top-down influences like attention, memory and
expectancy and depends on proper recurrent interactions between different,
separate visual areas. Here we investigate the role of different visual areas.
Cortical
organization and cognitive functions.
In
this program we study how the recurrent interactions make use of the laminar
organization of the cerebral cortex, and to what extent specific cognitive
operations depend on specific recurrent interactions. These studies are carried
out at the Netherlands Brain Institute in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
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