Dr Will Harrison (University of the Sunshine Coast)Title: Seeing More with Less: Efficient sensory coding with and without eye movements
Abstract: It is often difficult to understand perceptual and cognitive processes from a scientific point of view. Unfortunately, I think we often mistake our difficulty in understanding a problem with the complexity of the problem itself. For example, it may feel intuitive to conclude that the brain must use complex algorithms to coordinate action and perception solely because we, as scientists, have difficulty understanding how such phenomena come about. But what if the brain is much simpler?
Recently I’ve been trying to understand the minimum computational requirements for various perceptual and cognitive tasks. Efficient coding theory tells us that nervous systems should use as few resources as possible to convey the most amount of information. Put differently, the brain is lazy: if one neuron can code two pieces of information with high fidelity, it would be wasteful to have this information replicated by a second neuron. By combining ideas from efficient coding with psychophysical experiments and computational modelling, I have found efficiencies within the mammalian visual system that promote perceptual inference, with and without eye movements.
Bio: Dr Will Harrison is a cognitive neuroscientist who is interested in how the brain transforms visual information into conscious thoughts and memories. He received his PhD in Psychology from the University of Queensland in 2013, and has completed postdoctoral fellowships at Harvard Medical School, the University of Cambridge, and the Queensland Brain Institute. He has published dozens of papers in top international journals, focusing on how people perceive and remember objects in their peripheral vision, how eye movements affect what we see, and how the human brain uses the structure of natural environments to guide perception. Dr Harrison uses a variety of methodologies, include psychophysics, neuro-imaging, and computational modelling.