Synopsis

The course covers foundations and recent advances in the study of perception: the process of deriving information about the world from our sensory receptors.

We cover how physical stimuli are transformed into neural signals by the nervous system, and how the brain uses those signals to make inferences about the world. The course uses illusions and demonstrations to gain insight into those inferences, but also presents computational models of perceptual encoding and inference, and discusses connections to contemporary AI research. The focus is on audition and vision, with some discussion of touch, taste, and smell.

Specific topics include:

Sound and The Ear, Hearing Loss, Perception of Pitch/Loudness/Location, Auditory Scene Analysis (the Cocktail Party Problem), Speech Perception, The Eye, Neurophysiology of the Visual System, Mid-Level Vision, Depth Perception, Motion Perception, Lightness Perception, Color Perception, Object Recognition, Texture Perception, Attention and Awareness, Touch, Smell & Taste