Neurodiversity in visual functioning: Moving beyond case-control studies

Organizers: Catherine Manning¹, Michael-Paul Schallmo²; ¹University of Reading, UK, ²University of Minnesota

Visual functioning in psychiatric and developmental conditions is typically studied by comparing a single diagnosis against a control group. However this approach cannot tell us whether atypical visual functioning is condition-specific or shared across conditions, and it neglects co-occurrence and heterogeneity. Accordingly, recent conceptualisations have moved away from traditional diagnostic boundaries towards considering transdiagnostic dimensions of neurodiversity. This symposium will bring these recent conceptual advances to the broader VSS community, through cutting-edge work spanning conditions and methods. We will first present studies that directly compare conditions to uncover convergence and divergence, before moving towards transdiagnostic studies of visual functioning. More…

Large-scale visual neural datasets: where do we go from here?

Organizers: Alessandro Gifford¹, Kendrick Kay²; ¹Freie Universität Berlin, ²University of Minnesota

Recently, there has been an increase in both collection and use of large-scale visual neural datasets (LSVNDs), suggesting that the field of vision science is entering a new era of big open data. This transformation raises new and exciting questions about LSVNDs: their potential strengths, their potential pitfalls, how they can promote theory formation, and what LSVNDs we need most. This symposium addresses these questions through six talks from both LSVND creators and users, along with a guided interactive discussion with the audience aimed at sharing knowledge among VSS members and setting community-centered goals. More…

The temporal evolution of visual perception

Organizers: Lina Teichmann¹, Chris Baker¹; ¹Laboratory of Brain and Cognition, National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, USA

Visual processing is highly dynamic with neural representations evolving over several hundred milliseconds. This symposium will present multiple perspectives on the time course of visual processing, giving insight into how light falling on the retina ultimately gives rise to rich visual percepts. The speakers will focus on different methods (including EEG, MEG, intracranial recordings, and behaviour) and different domains of vision (including colour, object recognition, social perception and attention). Collectively, the work presented in this symposium will provide novel insights into the dynamic nature of visual perception across the visual hierarchy. More…

Attention: accept, reject, or major revisions?

Organizers: Alon Zivony¹; ¹University of Sheffield

The concept of “attention” has been criticized to be theoretically incoherent and even unsuitable for scientific research. How should we, as a field, respond to these criticisms? Should we avoid using the concept, change the way we conceptualize attention, or simply continue with our research as usual? Our speakers bring different perspectives from psychology and philosophy in an attempt to answer this question. We provide an overview of some of the difficulties with conceptualizing attention, as well as practical and theoretical solutions to these problems. In doing so, we hope to promote a better science of attention and related phenomena. More…

The Multifaceted effects of blindness and how sight might be restored

Organizer: Ella Striem-Amit¹; ¹Georgetown University

Congenital blindness illustrates the developmental roots of visual cortex functions. Our symposium of speakers from diverse academic careers present perspectives on the multifaceted effects of blindness on the brain and behavior. The speakers will describe the effect of sight loss on multisensory properties and on the visual cortex, highlighting differential effects in areas typically responding to motion and faces, and divergence of plasticity across individuals. We will also discuss the limitations of visual prostheses for restoring sight, and how they may be addressed. Altogether, our symposium will call attention to the substantial impact of plasticity and possibilities to overcome it. More…

Using deep networks to re-imagine object-based attention and perception

Organizers: Hossein Adeli¹, Seoyoung Ahn², Gregory Zelinsky²; ¹Columbia University, ²Stony Brook University

What are the computational mechanisms that transform visual features into coherent object percepts, and what role does attention play in this process? The speakers in this symposium will use various state-of-the-art deep neural network models to reexamine the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying object-based attention and perception. They will also explore new computational mechanisms for how the visual system groups visual features into coherent object percepts. This symposium will lay the foundation for the next generation of object-based attention models, ones that harness recent computational tools to advance our understanding of the object-centric nature of human perception. More…