The Nornes Lectureship in Neuroscience
Concordia College Centrum
Monday, April 16th
7 pm
The Neuroscience Program at Concordia College hosts the annual Nornes Lectureship in Neuroscience to benefit the Concordia campus and surrounding community. Each lectureship dives into a current neuroscience topic by inviting a researcher and educator in the neuroscience field to speak on Concordia's campus. The 2018 Nornes Lecturer is Dr. Marlene Behrmann, a professor of Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University who will be speaking on the topic of object recognition. Below you will find a description of Dr. Marlene Behrmann's talk that she will be giving at Concordia College's 2018 Nornes Lecture.
A broader vision of object recognition: Beyond the ventral cortex
The primary area of the brain that has been assumed to play a key role in object recognition is the ventral pathway of the cortical visual system. This conclusion comes from decades of research using neuroimaging techniques in non-human primates. Dr. Marlene Behrmann will talk about research that she has conducted in her own lab that looks at the nature of the ventral pathway. Dr. Behrmann will make the argument that the signals associated with object recognition are present in more areas than just the ventral cortex. There are also signals in the dorsal visual pathway and in the subcortical regions. Dr. Behrmann will go on to discuss various studies that have been done using fMRI imaging and psychophysics in both a normal brain, as well as a damaged brain. These studies will support her argument that these other regions are involved in the recognition of visual objects. According to Dr. Behrmann, objects are represented widely within the brain, and the underlying challenge is to understand the necessity and sufficiency of these representations.
A broader vision of object recognition: Beyond the ventral cortex
The primary area of the brain that has been assumed to play a key role in object recognition is the ventral pathway of the cortical visual system. This conclusion comes from decades of research using neuroimaging techniques in non-human primates. Dr. Marlene Behrmann will talk about research that she has conducted in her own lab that looks at the nature of the ventral pathway. Dr. Behrmann will make the argument that the signals associated with object recognition are present in more areas than just the ventral cortex. There are also signals in the dorsal visual pathway and in the subcortical regions. Dr. Behrmann will go on to discuss various studies that have been done using fMRI imaging and psychophysics in both a normal brain, as well as a damaged brain. These studies will support her argument that these other regions are involved in the recognition of visual objects. According to Dr. Behrmann, objects are represented widely within the brain, and the underlying challenge is to understand the necessity and sufficiency of these representations.