BIOGRAPHY
My research focuses on behavioral and computational approaches to object recognition and visual perception. In particular, I am interested in how humans are able to recognize three-dimensional objects from new viewpoints given that our eyes only receive two-dimensional images. Studying this question led to the development of the "multiple-views" or "view-based" approach to object recognition - that humans remember objects as collections of "snapshots" that are highly specific to the original viewing conditions and that normalization processes are used to match unfamiliar viewpoints to known views. To address the issue of expertise in object recognition, I and other researchers have developed an extensive set of visually similar novel objects that we use in experiments. Called "Greebles," they are organized in a hierarchical manner similar to faces (e.g. sex and race). I am also interested in answering questions about the functional architecture of the visual system using cognitive neuroscience. I have been using functional magnetic resonance imaging to explore which brain regions are active during the recognition of objects and faces. At the same time, I have been studying the visual recognition deficits of brain-injured individuals suffering from impaired face or object recognition. Finally, I am currently involved in developing new collaborations that will use neural networks to model visual recognition and virtual reality to study visual navigation and scene recognition.
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