Dear all
it is a pleasure to announce our next speaker for the onLINe seminar this Friday, 23rd April, at 2 pm CET. Pieter Roelfsema from the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience in Amsterdam will talk about
’Conscious visual perception and restoring it in blindness’.
Please find the Zoom link and abstract below.
See you there,
your onLINe organizers
Zoom link:
https://ovgu.zoom.us/j/3628581343
Passcode: onLINe
Conscious visual perception and restoring it in blindness - Pieter R. Roelfsema, Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, Amsterdam
I will discuss the mechanisms that determine whether a weak visual stimulus will reach consciousness or not. If the stimulus is simple, early visual cortex acts as a relay station that sends the information to higher visual areas. If the stimulus arrives at a minimal strength, it will be stored in working memory. However, during more complex visual perceptions, which for example depend on the segregation of a figure from the background, early visual cortex’ role goes beyond a simply relay. It now acts as a cognitive blackboard and conscious perception depends on it. Our results also inspire new approaches to create a visual prosthesis for the blind, by creating a direct interface with the visual cortex. I will discuss how high-channel-number interfaces with the visual cortex might be used to restore a rudimentary form of vision in blind individuals.