Perception & Action Seminar

The Perception & Action Seminar Series explores a wide range of research in the domain of human perception and controlling action.

The talks take place in Metcalf Research Building, Room 305 (Dome room), and are open to members of the Brown community.

Subscribe to the Perception & Action email list to be notified of upcoming talks.

Spring 2024 Speakers


  • February 1 - Zhenyu Zhu, CLPS (in-person)
  • February 8 - Kathryn Bonnen, Indiana University (Zoom)
  • February 22 - Leyla Isik, John Hopkins University (Zoom)
  • February 29 - Stefan Uddenberg, University of Chicago (in-person)
  • March 7 - Nora Newcombe, Temple University (in-person)
  • March 21 - Wayne Mackey, Statespace/Aimlabs (Zoom)
  • April 4 - Jeffrey Taube, Dartmouth (in-person)
  • April 11 - Johannes Burge, University of Pennsylvania (Zoom)
  • April 25 - Mary Hegarty, University of California, Santa Barbara (Zoom)
  • May 2 - Miranda Scolari, Texas Tech University (Zoom)
  • May 9 - Sabine Kastner, Princeton University (in-person)

Fall 2023 Speakers


  • September 14 - Sixuan Chen & Aaron Cochrane, CLPS (in-person)
  • September 21- Pachaya Sailamul, CLPS (in-person)
  • September 28 - Arthur Glenberg, Arizona State University (virtual)
  • October 5 - Peter Neri, École Normale Supérieure (virtual)
  • October 12 - Pieter Roelfsema, Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience (virtual)
  • October 19 - Aarlenne Khan, Université de Montréal (virtual)
  • October 26 -  TBD
  • November 2 - Alan A Stocker, University of Pennsylvania (virtual)
  • November 9 - Sean O’Bryan, CLPS (in-person)
  • November 16 - Daniel Dilks, Emory University (in-person)
  • November 30 - Adrian Haith, Johns Hopkins University (virtual)
  • December 7- Wilson S Geisler, University of Texas at Austin (in-person)

Spring 2023 Speakers


  • March 9 - Jovan Kemp, CLPS: Examing dept cue intergration as a deterministic process
  • March 16 - Dr. Grace Lindsay, New York University: Connecting performance benefits on visual tasks to neural mechanisms using convolutional neural networks
  • March 23 - Amaro Tuninetti, CLPS: Effects of unpredictability on a broadband echolocating bat
  • April 6 - Dr. Tim WelshUniversity of Toronto: How TwO Plan and Coordinate Actions in Social Contexts
  • April 20 - Paul Linton, Columbia University: Minimal theory of 3D vision
  • April 27 - Dr. Michael Richardson, Macquarie University: Modelling and understanding human behaviour and action decisions for predictive human-machine systems
  • May 4 - Pachaya Sailamul, CLPS: TBA 
  • May 27 - Ailin Deng, CLPS: TBA

Fall 2022 Speakers


  • Sept. 15- Cassandra Engstrom and Yuang Cheng, CLPS: Individual differences in spatial navigation strategy under multimodal conflict
  • Sept. 22- Lakshmi Govindarajan, CLPS : The Representation-Utilization Dichotomy in Deep Reinforcement Learning Agents
  • Sept. 29- Dr. Michael Silver, CLPS: UC Berkeley: Spatial attention, visual perception, and endogenous brain activity
  • Oct. 6 - Dr. Geoffrey AguirreUniversity of Pennsylvania: Perceptual consequences of melanopsin stimulation
  • Oct. 13 - Dr. Kevin Smith, Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Representations for physical scene understanding 
  • Oct. 20 - Dr. Oliver Layton, Colby College: Deep learning and self-motion perception from optic flow 
  • Oct. 27 - Dr. Mark Schurgin, Google: Beyond Academia: What it's like doing research in industry
  • Nov. 3 - Dr. Denise Henriques, York University: Proprioception and prediction in visuomotor learning
  • Nov. 10 - Abdul-Rahim DeebCLPS: Perception of Relative Mass Over Time
  • Nov. 17 - Dr. Audrey van der MeerNorwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU): The development of visual motion perception from an Ecological Neuroscience perspective
  • Dec. 1 - Ailin Deng, CLPS
  • Dec. 8 - Meghan Willcoxon, CLPS: Effects of attention and task-relevance in crowd following 

Spring 2022 Speakers


  • Feb. 10- Dr. Ruth Rosenholtz, MIT: Demystifying the richness of visual perception
  • Feb. 17-Dr. Michaela Warenecke, Meta: Lessons from bats and humans: decoding acoustic scenes
  • Feb. 24-James Wilmott, CLPS: Learning processes for depth cue combination and sensorimotor adaptation during reach-to-grasp actions
  • Mar. 3-Dr. Jacqueline Fulvio, University of Wisconson-Madison: Serialdependence as a “post-perceptual” strategy for behavioral reliability
  • Mar. 10-Dr. Nura Sidarus, Royal Holloway University of London: Who's in control? Prospective contributions to the sense of agency
  • Mar. 17-Jiuyang Bai, CLPS: Visual Control Laws for Collision Avoidance with Moving Obstacles
  • Mar. 24-Dr. Jonathan Victor, Cornell: Information-theoretic analysis of sensing for olfactory navigation
  • Apr. 14-Dr. Martin Wiener, George Mason UniversityHow movements shape the perception of time
  • Apr. 21-Dr. Eero Simoncelli, NYU: Metric properties of neural representations
  • Apr. 28-Dr. Howie Zelaznik, Purdue: Timing with and without a central timekeeper, i.e. a clock, in motor behavior
  • May. 5-Dr. Bart Anderson, University of Sydney: Mid-level vision:  Understanding how the visual system extracts the causes of optical structure

Fall 2021 Speakers


  • Sept. 16- First Year Perception and Action Students, CLPS
  • Sept. 23- Dr. Shihab Shamma, University of Maryland: Learning Speech and Music Production and Perception through Sensorimotor Interactions 
  • Sept. 20- Dr. Alessandra Sciutti, Istituto Italiano di Technologia: Establishing shared perception with a robot
  • Oct. 7- Dr. Melisa Menceloglu, CLPS, Radial bias alters perceived object orientation
  • Oct. 14- Dr. Guido Maiello, Justus Liebig University Giessen: How humans visually select where to grasp objects
  • Oct. 21- Dr. Karla Evans, York University: On Nature of Visual Non-Selective Processing and How It Can Help Advance Early Cancer Detection
  • Oct. 28- Dr. Li Li, NYU Shanghai: Comparing the perception of 2D motion patterns versus optic flow
  • Nov. 4- Dr. Yaffa Yeshurun, University of Haifa: What is the nature of temporal crowding?
  • Nov.11-Dr. Elisa Filevich, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin: How (much) do we know about the way we move our bodies?: Motor metacognition and its relationship to other metacognitive domains 
  • Nov.18- Dr. Minjung Kim, Facebook Reality Labs, What can we see on a high dynamic range display?
  • Dec. 2-Dr. Sean O'Bryan: CLPS, Decoding the role of learned selective attention in categorization and predictive inference

Spring 2021 Speakers


  • Jan. 28 - Emily Cooper, UC Berkeley: Perceptual Science for Augmented Reality
  • Feb. 18- Roland Fleming, Giessen University: Learning to See Stuff
  • Feb. 25- Pawel Romanczuk, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin: Collective Information Processing - Interplay of self-organization and function in collective (biological) systems. 
  • Mar. 4- Brian Rogers, Pembroke College, Oxford: The Perception of the “3-D” World: Conceptions and Misconceptions
  • Mar. 11-Ramesh Balasubramaniam, UC Merced: Music, movement, and the human brain
  • Mar. 18-Marisa Carrasco, NYU: Attention shapes perception 
  • Mar. 25-Evangelos Christou, University of Florida: Movement steadiness and endpoint control in healthy aging and neurological disease
  • Apr. 1-Edward Vogel, University of Chicago: The impact of distraction on working memory
  • Apr. 8-Yaoda Xu, Yale University: Understanding visual representations in the human occipito-temporal and posterior parietal cortices and convolutional neural networks
  • Apr. 15-Laura Thomas, North Dakota State University, Active thought: Interplays between action, perception, and cognition

2020 Speakers


  • Sept. 17 - Anthony Bruno, Kei Yoshida, Yifei "Jerry" Hu, Brown University: Visual and Auditory Polyrhythm Perception,Beyond Fitts’s Law: A Three-Phase Model Predicts Movement Time to Position an Object in an Immersive 3D Virtual Environment, Perceptual-motor Recalibration in Naturalistic and Virtual Environments
  • Sept. 24 - Melisa Menceloglu, Brown University: Behavioral and EEG Investigations of Temporal Orienting of Attention in Vision & Audition
  • Oct. 1 - James Todd, Ohio State University: The perceptual categorization of surface materials
  • Oct. 8 - Joshua Liddy, Brown University: Exploring mechanisms of postural instability using novel balance technology
  • Oct. 15 - Rebecca Spencer, University of Massachusetts Amherst: Sleep’s role in motor learning: from development to aging
  • Oct. 22 - Bijan Pesaran, New York University: The channel modulation hypothesis and coordinated visual behavior
  • Oct. 29 - Josh McDermott, MIT: Neural Network Models of Human Hearing
  • Nov. 5 - Kristina Visscher, University of Alabama at Birmingham: The cortical underpinnings of central vs. peripheral vision, and changes after central vision loss
  • Nov. 12 - Nicole Rust, University of Pennsylvania: The neural mechanisms that support image memory
  • Nov. 19 - Zhiyan Wang, Brown University: Visual perceptual learning of faces- a study with Body Dysmorphic Disorder Patients
  • Dec. 3 - Jacob Feldman, Rutgers University: Complexity and information in category and feature learning

2018-2019 Speakers


  • Sept. 20 - John Maule, University of Sussex: Colour perception in autism: Summary statistics, adaptation and priors
  • Sept. 27 - Tyler Barnes-Diana & Meghan Willcoxon, Brown University
  • Oct. 3 - James Dixon, UConn: Lessons on Perception-Action from Dissipative Structures
  • Oct. 11 - Junkyung Kim, Brown University: Horizontal mechanisms of perceptual grouping
  • Oct. 25 - Dian Yu, MIT: Modeling peripheral vision – Rethinking grouping (and more) in the periphery
  • Nov. 8 - Chris Sims, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
  • Nov. 15 - Carlo Campagnoli, Princeton University
  • Nov. 29 - Zsuzsa Kaldy, UMass, Boston
  • Dec. 6 - Robert Desimone, MIT
  • Feb. 14 - Leslie Lai, Brown University
  • Mar. 7 - Miyoung Kwon, U. Alabama
  • Mar. 14 - David Landsberger, NYUMC
  • Mar. 21 - Charles Gilbert, Rockefeller University
  • Apr. 11 - Jacob Feldman, Rutgers
  • Apr. 18 - Michele Rucci, Rochester
  • Apr. 25 - Jody Culham, U Western Ontario

Past Speakers


  • Narcisse Bichot, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  • Michael Cinelli, Wilfrid Laurier University-Waterloo

  • Randy Flanagan, Queen’s University

  • Benjamin Jee, Rhode Island College

  • Santani Teng, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  • Anna Kosovicheva, Northeastern University

  • Daniel Yamins, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  • Edward Large, University of Connecticut

  • Ella Amit, Harvard University

  • Heiko Hecht, Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz

  • Jonathan Winawer, New York University

  • Joshua Ewen, Kennedy Krieger Institute

  • Mike Esterman, Boston University

  • Nicoletta Orlandi, UC-Santa Cruz

  • Peter Bex, Northeastern University

  • Jordan Taylor, Princeton University

  • Ken Nakayama, Harvard University

  • Dhanraj Vishwantha, University of St. Andrews