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Krasnow Institute > Monday Seminars > Abstracts Environmental Influences on the Functional Architecture of Vision: Computational, Behavioral and Neuroimaging Studies Thad A. Polk Focal brain damage can undermine very specific cognitive functions (motion detection, color vision, face recognition, explicit learning...) while leaving the rest of cognition relatively preserved. Similarly, functional neuroimaging reveals specific areas of the brain that are selectively activated by particular cognitive tasks. The obvious implication is that cognition is implemented via a modular architecture. That is, cognition arises from a large number of relatively independent, component processes. These processes appear to be implemented in dedicated neural tissue in specific parts of the brain and to interact within an overall functional architecture to give rise to behavior. In this talk, I will argue that the environment, and specifically correlations within the environment, can and do play a significant role in shaping this functional architecture. I will present two examples from the architecture of vision that illustrate this idea. For both I will describe neural network models that demonstrate how environmental correlations could interact with cortical learning mechanisms to give rise to observed features of the functional architecture. These models predict that manipulating environmental correlations could produce changes in the visual architecture and I will present behavioral studies that support these predictions. Finally, I will present preliminary results from two neuroimaging experiments that were designed to identify visual modules that our models predict arise as a result of environmental correlations. (This research was done in collaboration with Dr. Martha Farah at the University of Pennsylvania)
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