VS298: Unsolved Problems in Vision
One of the goals of vision science is to understand the nature of perception and its neural substrates. There are now many well established techniques and paradigms in both psychophysics and neuroscience to address problems in vision. However, knowing how to frame these questions for investigation is not necessarily obvious. Nervous systems present us with stunning complexity, and the purpose of perception itself is deeply mysterious. The goal of this seminar course is to step back and ask, what are the important problems that remain unsolved in vision research, and how should these be approached empirically? The course will consist of alternating weeks of discussion and guest lectures by vision scientists who will frame their views of the core unsolved problems. Interdisciplinary groups of students will devise a practical research plan to address an unsolved problem of their choice.
Instructors: Stan Klein, Jerry Feldman, Bruno Olshausen, and Karl Zipser
GSI: Dan Coates
Enrollment information:
VS 298 (section 2), 2 units
CCN: 66478
Meeting time and place: Tuesday 6-8, 560 Evans (Redwood Center conference room)
Email list:
- Seminar mailing list vs298_unsolved_problems_in_vision@lists.berkeley.edu subscribe
- Lecture series mailing list subscribe
Weekly schedule:
Date | Topic/Reading |
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Sept. 2 | Introduction |
Sept. 9 | Methodology in vision science (Stan Klein)
Marcus background discussion
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Sept. 16 | Evening seminar, focus on student projects: form groups and discuss proposal topics grant_format |
Sept. 19 (Friday) 11:00 a.m., 5101 Tolman |
Gary Marcus lecture: Computational diversity and the mesoscale organization of the neocortex video
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Sept. 23 | Marcus discussion (postponed) Feldman background discussion
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Sept. 30 | Discuss student projects |
Wed. Oct. 1, 4:15 p.m., 489 Minor Hall | Feldman lecture: The neural binding problem(s) and related mysteries video As with many other “problems” in vision and cognitive science, “the binding problem” has been used to label a wide range of tasks of radically different behavioral and computational structure. These include a “hard” version that is currently intractable, a feature-binding variant that is productive routine science and a variable-binding case that is unsolved, but should be solvable. The talk will cover all these and some related problems that seem intractably hard as well as some that are unsolved, but are being approached with current and planned experiments.
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Oct. 7 | Feldman discussion Malik background discussion
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Tue. Oct. 14, 6 to 8 p.m. 560 Evans | Jitendra Malik lecture: The Three R's of Computer Vision: Recognition, Reconstruction and Reorganization
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Oct. 20, 12-1:30 p.m., Minor 489 | Harold Bedell lecture: Contour interaction: as far from the muddling crowd?
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Oct. 21 | Malik discussion Nakayama and Shimojo background discussion
(All Nakayama pubs available here)
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Oct. 28 | Ken Nakayama lecture: The scientist’s choice: solving, explaining, discovering . . . .
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Nov. 3 (Monday)
12:00 p.m. 489 Minor Hall |
Shinsuke Shimojo lecture: Postdiction: its implications on visual awareness, hindsight, and sense of agency
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Nov. 4 | Nakayama and Shimojo discussion Wandell background discussion
In Brain Mapping: An Encyclopedic Reference (Edited by Thompson and Friston.) pdf |
(Friday) Nov. 14 | Brian Wandell lecture
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Nov. 18 | Wandell discussion Gallant background discussion
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Nov. 25 | Jack Gallant lecture
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Dec. 2, 4-6 p.m., 125 Li Ka Shing | Christof Koch lecture: Unsolved Problems in Vision: Consciousness. Evening seminar: Koch Discussion |
Additional Materials
- recent special issue of CurrOpinNeuro journal
- Olshausen BA Olshausen (2013) Perception as an Inference Problem. pdf
- Olshausen BA (2012) 20 years of learning about vision: Questions answered, questions unanswered, and questions not yet asked. In: 20 Years of Computational Neuroscience (Symposium of the CNS 2010 annual meeting) pdf
- Kitaoka, A (2014) Color-dependent motion illusions in stationary images and their phenomenal dimorphism. Perception advance online publication pdf
- O'Regan, J. K., & Noë, A. (2001). A sensorimotor account of vision and visual consciousness. Behavioral and brain sciences, 24(05), 939-973.pdf
- Bruno Olshausen lecture (1 July 2014) 20 Years of Learning About Vision: Questions Answered, Questions Unanswered, and Questions Not Yet Asked video
- Solari, S. V. H., & Stoner, R. (2011). Cognitive consilience: primate non-primary neuroanatomical circuits underlying cognition. Frontiers in neuroanatomy, 5. pdf