Davida Teller Award Nominations Now Open

The Vision Sciences Society is pleased to announce the call for nominations for the fifth Davida Teller Award, to be awarded at our 2017 meeting in St. Pete Beach, Florida. The late Davida Teller was an exceptional scientist and a great colleague. The award will be given to a woman vision scientist, who has made exceptional contributions to the field of vision science. A strong history of mentoring will also be given consideration.

Nominations must be made by a member of VSS, and will be reviewed by an Award Committee of three established visual scientists selected from VSS membership. Members of the Award Committee and of the VSS Board of Directors cannot serve as nominators.

Nominations must be submitted by February 6, 2017. The winner will be announced in late March. The recipient will be recognized at the VSS 2017 meeting in St. Pete Beach.

The nominations should include the following: description of the nominee’s scientific contributions and history of mentoring, and a current curriculum vita. The nomination may include supporting letters describing both importance of scientific contributions and mentoring activity. Recipients must have been active VSS members in recent years. Previously considered nominees are eligible to be re-nominated.

Nominations for the Davida Teller Award should be submitted by email to Shauney Wilson at .

Bosco Tjan

As many of you may already know, on Friday our friend and colleague Professor Bosco Tjan died tragically at USC. While we are trying to come to terms with this incomprehensible tragedy, the VSS Board would like to extend its deepest condolences to his wife and son, his students and postdocs, and to his colleagues and friends at USC and in the broader vision community.

We would like to acknowledge his many contributions to the vision community and to VSS in particular. He energized past meetings with his keen intellect and warmth, and he will be sorely missed.

VSS Board

ARVO/VSS Research Fellowship Award application is now open through January 31

The 2017 ARVO/VSS Research Fellowship Award application is now open through January 31, 2017.

The purpose of the ARVO/VSS Research Fellowship is to encourage and foster new collaborations between clinical and basic vision researchers to better train young scientists in the area of translational research. These fellowships will provide research funds to support students who wish to acquire training in a cross-disciplinary lab to promote their ability to perform translational research and compete for research funding as their career matures.

If you know of ARVO Members-in-Training who may be interested in translational research, please encourage them to apply.

To learn more about eligibility and the general guidelines of the application, please visit: www.arvo.org/ARVO_VSS, and email with any questions.

Planning a Satellite Event for VSS 2017? Applications Now Being Accepted

VSS welcomes applications for satellite events to be held at the 2017 meeting in St. Pete Beach. Satellite events can be workshops, business meetings, social events or ancillary events of interest to VSS attendees, but which are not planned or sponsored directly by VSS. Admission to Satellite Events can either be by invitation to a subset of meeting attendees, or open to all.

To request space for a satellite event at VSS 2017, complete the online VSS 2017 Satellite Events Request Form. Requests will be considered on a first-come, first-served basis as long as space is available.

For complete satellite event information and to complete the online request form, go to Satellite Events.

Graphics Competition for the 2017 VSS Annual Meeting

VSS is seeking interesting visual images to be used for the cover of the 2017 VSS printed program, t-shirts, signage, badges, and tote bags. There will be two separate graphic competitions: T-Shirt Design Competition and Program Cover Competition.

This competition is open-ended in that the images might relate to submitted scientific work, St. Pete Beach and surrounding areas, or VSS. The image could also be an alteration of the VSS Logo.

A $350 award will be given to the winner of each competition.

You must be a current VSS member to submit an image for consideration. Image specifications, instructions on how to submit and previous years’ selected graphics can be found at http://www.visionsciences.org/graphics-competition/ .

The deadline for submitting images is January 12, 2017.

Hotel Reservations Are Now Available at the TradeWinds

The 17th annual meeting of the Vision Sciences Society will be held at the TradeWinds Island Resorts in St. Pete Beach, Florida.

VSS has negotiated special room rates for the TradeWinds Island Grand and Guy Harvey Outpost hotels.
New this year: VSS is pleased to offer a limited number of Government Rate rooms at the Guy Harvey for VSS attendees. Rooms will be available on a first come first-served basis.

Discount rates are available May 15 – 26, 2017. The deadline to reserve a hotel room is April 15, 2017 or until the VSS Room Block is sold out.

For detailed room information and a link to make your reservation, go to Accommodations.

Call for Symposium Proposals

VSS seeks proposals for symposia to be held during the 2017 VSS Annual Meeting, which begins Friday, May 19. Four to six symposia will be scheduled, each lasting two hours.

VSS Symposia deal with contemporary research topics in vision research. Symposia can be organized by content area or by method, but talks within a symposium should focus on broader conceptual themes than a typical VSS presentation. There should be at least four and no more than five speakers within a symposium session, and each talk should be scheduled for between 20 and 30 minutes, including time for discussion. Discussion time can be scheduled after individual talks and/or at the end of the session.

The symposium organizer must be a current (2017) VSS member, but invited speakers need not be members. Complete submission instructions can be found at http://www.visionsciences.org/symposium-submissions/. Submissions should be made online. Symposia will be selected by the VSS Board of Directors on the basis of scientific merit, timeliness, theoretical innovation and/or breadth, methodological innovation and/or diversity, and overlap (less being better) with symposia of last year and with the regular program. Symposia often benefit from a diversity of perspective and institutional affiliations. Proposals from young investigators are particularly encouraged.

The quality of the speakers is important to a symposium, so scheduled speakers may not be substituted, even by coauthors. Organizers agree with their proposal submission, that all speakers are committed to participating in the symposium, and that speakers have not agreed to participate in more than one symposium.

Deadline: November 4, 2016

Decisions will be made by November 18, 2016. Please direct any questions to .

2017 Meet the Professors

Monday, May 22, 2017, 4:45 – 6:00 pm, Breck Deck North

Online registration for Meet the Professors is closed. There are still a few spaces available. Please meet at Breck Deck North at 4:30 pm if you are interested in attending.

Students and postdocs are invited to the second annual “Meet the Professors” event, Monday afternoon from 4:45 to 6:00 pm, immediately preceding the VSS Dinner and Demo Night. This is an opportunity for a free-wheeling, open-ended discussion with members of the VSS Board and other professors. You might chat about science, the annual meeting, building a career, or whatever comes up.

This year, the event will consist of two 30-minute sessions separated by a 15-minute snack break. Please select a different professor for each session. Space is limited and is assigned on a first-come, first-served basis.

Professors and VSS Board Members

Members of the VSS Board are indicated with an asterisk*, in case you have a specific interest in talking to a member of the board.

David Brainard* (University of Pennsylvania) studies human color vision, with particular interests in the consequences of spatial and spectral sampling by the photoreceptors and in the mechanisms mediating color constancy.

Eli Brenner* (Free University, Amsterdam) studies how visual information is used to guide our actions.

Marisa Carrasco (NYU) uses human psychophysics, neuroimaging, and computational modeling to investigate the relation between the psychological and neural mechanisms involved in visual perception and attention.

Isabel Gauthier (Vanderbilt University) uses behavioral and brain imaging methods to study perceptual expertise, object and face recognition, and individual differences in vision.

Julie Harris (St. Andrews) studies our perception of the 3D world, including binocular vision and 3D motion.  She also has an interest in animal camouflage.

Sheng He (University of Minnesota & Institute of Biophysics, CAS) uses psychophysical and neuroimaging (fMRI, EEG, MEG) methods to study spatiotemporal properties of vision, binocular interaction, visual attention, visual object recognition, and visual awareness.

Michael Herzog (EPFL – Switzerland) studies spatial and temporal vision in healthy and clinical populations.

Todd Horowitz (National Cancer Institute) is broadly interested in how vision science can be leveraged to reduce the burden of cancer, from  improving detection and diagnosis to understanding the cognitive complaints of cancer survivors.

Lynne Kiorpes* (NYU) uses behavioral and neurophysiological approaches to study visual development and visual disability. The goal is to understand the neural limitations on development and the effects of abnormal visual experience.

Dennis Levi (UC Berkeley) studies plasticity both in normal vision, and in humans deprived of normal binocular visual experience, using psychophysics and neuroimaging.

Ennio Mingolla (Northeastern) develops and tests of neural network models of visual perception, notably the segmentation, grouping, and contour formation processes of early and middle vision in primates, and on the transition of these models to technological applications.

Concetta Morrone (University of Pisa) studies the visual system in man and infants using psychophysical, electrophysiological, brain imaging and computational techniques. More recent research interests have been vision during eye-movement, perception of time and plasticity of the adult visual brain.

Tony Norcia* (Stanford University) studies the intricacies of visual development, partly to better understand visual functioning in the adult and abnormal visual processing.

Aude Oliva (MIT) studies human vision and memory, using methods from human perception and cognition, computer science and human neuroscience (fMRI, MEG)

Mary Peterson (University of Arizona) uses behavioral methods, neuropsychology, ERPs, and fMRI to investigate the competitive processes producing object perception and the interactions between perception and memory.

Jeff Schall* (Vanderbilt University) studies the neural and computational mechanisms that guide, control and monitor visually-guided gaze behavior.

James Tanaka (University of Victoria) studies the cognitive and neural processes of face recognition and object expertise.  He is interested in the perceptual strategies of real world experts, individuals on the autism spectrum and how a perceptual novice becomes an expert.

Preeti Verghese* (Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute) studies spatial vision, visual search and attention, as well as eye and hand movements in normal vision and in individuals with central field loss.

Andrew Watson* (Apple) studies human spatial, temporal and motion processing, computational modeling of vision, and applications of vision science to imaging technology.

Jeremy Wolfe* (Harvard Med & Brigham and Women’s Hospital) studies visual attention and visual search with a special interest in socially important tasks like cancer screening in radiology.

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ARVO@VSS 2016

Information processing in a simple network: What the humble retina tells the brain

Time/Room: Friday, May 13, 2016, 5:00 – 7:00 pm, Talk Room 1-2
Organizers: Scott Nawy, PhD, University of Nebraska Medical Center and Anthony Norcia, Stanford University
Presenters: Greg Field, Michael Crair, William Guido, Wei Wei

< Back to 2016 Symposia

This year’s biennial ARVO at VSS symposium features a selection of recent work on circuit-level analyses of retinal, thalamic and collicular systems that are relevant to understanding of cortical mechanisms of vision. The speakers deploy a range of state-of-the art methods that bring an unprecedented level of precision to dissecting these important visual circuits.

Circuitry and computation in the mammalian retina.

Speaker: Greg Field; USC

The mammalian retina is composed of ~80 distinct neuronal cell types. These neurons work in concert to parcel visual information into ~30 different RGC types, each of which transmits a different message about the visual scene to the brain. I will describe ongoing work in my lab to define the functional role of different cell types in the mammalian retina via the combination of large-scale multi-electrode array recordings and chemogenetic manipulation of genetically defined cell types. This combination of approaches is revealing the specialized roles played by different cell types to encode visual scenes for perception and behavior.

Retinal activity guides visual circuit development prior to sensory experience

Speaker: Michael C. Crair; Yale

Classic models emphasize an important role of sensory experience in the development of visual circuits in the mammalian brain. However, recent evidence indicates that fundamental features of visual circuits in the thalamus, cortex and superior colliculus emerge prior to the emergence of form vision. I will summarize our latest experiments that use in vivo optical imaging techniques and molecular-genetic manipulations in mice to demonstrate that spontaneous retinal activity, generated prior to vision, plays an essential role in sculpting the development of visual circuits in the mammalian brain.

Dissecting circuits in the mouse visual thalamus.

Speaker: William Guido; University of Louisville

The contemporary view of the dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus (dLGN) of thalamus is that of a visual relay, where the gain of signal transmission is modulated by a diverse set of inputs that arise from non-retinal sources. I will highlight our recent studies in the mouse, an animal model that provides unprecedented access into the circuitry underlying these operations.

Neural mechanisms of direction selectivity in the retina

Speaker: Wei Wei; Department of Neurobiology, The University of Chicago
Authors: Qiang Chen, David Koren and Wei Wei, Department of Neurobiology, The University of Chicago

The direction selective circuit in the retina computes motion directions and conveys this information to higher brain areas via the spiking activity of direction selective ganglion cells. While multiple synaptic mechanisms have been implicated in the generation of direction selectivity in the retina, it is unclear how individual mechanism modulates the firing patterns of direction selective ganglion cells. Here, we aim to unambiguously differentiate the contributions of distinct circuit components to direction selectivity by loss-of-function studies using genetic, electrophysiological and functional imaging methods. Our results highlight the concerted actions of synaptic and cell-intrinsic mechanisms required for robust direction selectivity in the retina, and provide critical insights into how patterned excitation and inhibition collectively implement sensory processing in the brain.

< Back to 2016 Symposia

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