[CCoE Notice] Ph.D. Dissertation Announcement: Babak Noory, Tuesday April 22 at 2p

[Grayson, Audrey A]

PhD Dissertation Announcement


Non-Retinotopic Reference Frames in Human Vision:
A Dynamic Journey from Visual Chaos to Clarity

Babak Noory

Date: Tuesday, April 22nd

Place: N355 Engineering Building 1

Time: 14:00 - 16:00

Committee Chair:      Dr. Haluk Ogmen, University of Houston, Electrical and Computer Engineering

Committee Members:
Dr. Bruno G. Breitmeyer, University of Houston, Psychology
Dr. Jose Luis Contreras-Vidal, University of Houston, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Dr. Michael H. Herzog, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)
Dr. Bhavin Sheth, University of Houston, Electrical and Computer Engineering

Preservation of neighborhood relations, as images of distal stimuli are projected from retina to the early areas of the visual cortex, is known as retinotopic organization. Purely retinotopic theories of vision, however, cannot explain how clarity of dynamic form is achieved under natural ecological conditions (i.e. in the presence of object/observer motion). Recent studies have indicated that many visual attributes of a stimulus are computed according to non-retinotopic reference frames. The goal of this research was to understand the nature and spatio-temporal properties of reference frames involved in non-retinotopic computations. We utilized a Ternus-Pikler apparent motion experimental paradigm to achieve this goal.

Our results indicate that the effect of a dynamic non-retinotopic reference frame extends over space, creating a field within which target stimuli are localized and perceived relative to the reference. The fields of neighboring dynamic reference frames interact; static stimuli do not affect the fields of dynamic references; the non-retinotopic field effect is maximized when the target and the reference stimuli appear in phase; and the strength of the field decreases with target-reference phase shift. Our results further show that, even though visual masking mechanisms operate in retinotopic domain, masking effect attenuates significantly in the presence of predictable non-retinotopic reference frames.

In conclusion, this work reveals that the dynamic nature of our visual experience should be viewed as part of the solution, rather than a problem in ecological vision.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://Bug.EGR.UH.EDU/pipermail/engi-dist/attachments/20140414/6c94fb51/attachment-0001.html 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: annoucement_defense_final.doc
Type: application/msword
Size: 182784 bytes
Desc: annoucement_defense_final.doc
Url : http://Bug.EGR.UH.EDU/pipermail/engi-dist/attachments/20140414/6c94fb51/attachment-0001.doc