Holcombe

We're curious about temporal aspects of human visual processing - how quickly do different cortical modules and stages process information, and how are they coordinated in time? We use behavioral experiments, illustrated by the animations below, to compare speed limits for different features and the dynamics of how these features are bound into a coherent percept. One coordination problem occurs because when an object moves across the visual field, it stimulates different populations of neurons in early visual cortex, so we're testing how the signals from different areas are combined by later stages of the brain. Overall, fast processes somehow work together with others that are very sluggish in order to yield conscious perception. Recently, we've begun experiments to see how temporal limits constrain our interactions with moving objects.