The organizing principles underlying cortical visual processing streams

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Abstract/Contents

Abstract
Confronted by a chaotic and rapidly changing world, as humans we are constantly performing computations on the torrent of visual input we receive, deciding whether the shape in front of us is a building or a car (what), where said car is (where), and whether its currently moving towards us (what it is doing). To determine this quickly, efficiently, and ideally in parallel, the human visual system is thought to be divided into multiple, distinct processing streams. In the experiments described here, I use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI) and neural networks to investigate how structure and function are linked to produce the organization of the visual cortex into differentiated streams. In Study 1, I focus in on the case study of the well-characterized system of face processing to ask how the most basic computations differ across processing streams and then how anatomical connections from the earliest stages of the cortical visual system to higher-level face-selective areas reflect different computational demands across streams. In Study 2, I zoom out to ask what are the underlying principles behind the organization of visual cortex into processing streams. While the streams are typically discussed in the context of what behaviors they each may serve, I find that instead their emergence can be explained by optimization pressures to learn generally useful visual representations, while fitting those representations in the constrained physical space of the skull. Together, these findings provide a window of insight into why and how the functional organization of human visual cortex into specialized processing streams emerges, and may have implications for how to efficiently build more general artificial intelligence systems.

Description

Type of resource text
Form electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource
Extent 1 online resource.
Place California
Place [Stanford, California]
Publisher [Stanford University]
Copyright date 2023; ©2023
Publication date 2023; 2023
Issuance monographic
Language English

Creators/Contributors

Author Finzi, Rebecca Dawn
Degree supervisor Grill-Spector, Kalanit
Thesis advisor Grill-Spector, Kalanit
Thesis advisor Druckmann, Shaul
Thesis advisor Gardner, Justin
Thesis advisor Kay,Kendrick
Thesis advisor Wandell, Brian
Thesis advisor Yamins, Dan
Degree committee member Druckmann, Shaul
Degree committee member Gardner, Justin
Degree committee member Kay,Kendrick
Degree committee member Wandell, Brian
Degree committee member Yamins, Dan
Associated with Stanford University, School of Humanities and Sciences
Associated with Stanford University, Department of Psychology

Subjects

Genre Theses
Genre Text

Bibliographic information

Statement of responsibility Dawn Finzi.
Note Submitted to the Department of Psychology.
Thesis Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2023.
Location https://purl.stanford.edu/ry051vm8986

Access conditions

Copyright
© 2023 by Rebecca Dawn Finzi
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).

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