BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Talks.cam//talks.cam.ac.uk//
X-WR-CALNAME:Talks.cam
BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY:How representing multiple objects (and features) as an ensemble en
 hances higher-level visual cognition  - George Alvarez
DTSTART:20150720T150000Z
DTEND:20150720T160000Z
UID:TALK60167@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Jenna Parker
DESCRIPTION:The human visual system has a massively parallel architecture\
 , and yet it can only accurately represent a handful of objects at once. A
  vast literature has focused on ways to explain these severe capacity limi
 tations (slots\, resources\, central bottlenecks\, brain juice\, neural co
 mpetition)\, but today I will focus on understanding how the visual system
  copes with these limitations.\nSpecifically\, I will focus on the possibi
 lity that the visual system does what we (scientists) would do with a bunc
 h of noisy measurements: it averages them and combines them to represent a
  statistical summary\, or ensemble representation.\nI will describe recent
  experiments which show that ensemble representations can be extracted at 
 early processing stages (prior to object or scene recognition) and that th
 ese statistical representations enhance downstream processes\, including a
 ttentional guidance\, object recognition\, and perhaps categorization as w
 ell. \nCombined\, these results suggest that ensemble representations are 
 efficiently computed and useful for many stages of visual processing\, mak
 ing ensemble coding a crucial mechanism for coping with the severe capacit
 y limits on higher-level visual cognition.\n
LOCATION:Lecture Theatre\, MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit\, 15 Chau
 cer Road\, Cambridge
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR