We study visual and auditory perception and the neurobiological underpinnings of perceptual phenomena, including the evolution of simple networks in simulated environments. We employ studies of human perception along with computer simulations.

Overview:

Current research in the Purves laboratory concerns visual and auditory perception and the neurobiological underpinnings of perceptual phenomena. Ongoing investigations in vision include understanding the perception of lightness, brightness, color, orientation, motion, and depth; the interest in audition concerns understanding pitch relationships in music, based on the similarity of musical tones and voiced speech. The unifying theme of these projects is the hypothesis that perceptions are generated according to a wholly empirical strategy that presents in consciousness (or in unconscious behavior) the empirical rank of stimuli rather than stimulus features, or the properties of objects in the world. This theory of perception and its relation to brain structure and function is being explored by examining the responses of human subjects, the statistical relation of stimuli and their sources in natural image and sound databases, and the properties of artificial neural networks evolved in simulated environments.