CBMM Weekly Research Meeting: Progress of CBMM Challenge – Theories of Intelligence

April 18, 2014 - 4:00 pm to 5:30 pm
Speaker/s: 

Winrich Freiwald and Joel Z. Leibo; CBMM Thrust 5 – Theories for Intelligence

Title: On the neural mechanisms of face recognition: from experiments to theory

Abstract:

Object recognition, the ability to identify an object despite vast changes in appearance due to changes in lighting or orientation, is a major accomplishment of the primate brain, as a result of which we can recognize objects with an ease belying the daunting complexity of the computational challenges involved. Understanding not only the algorithms used to answer the questions What is there? Who is there?, but also the underlying neural mechanisms  is a major problem for both the experimental and the theoretical neurosciences – and one of the main items in the CBMM challenge. To decipher the mechanisms of object recognition, we have taken advantage of a unique model system evolution has provided us with. The temporal lobes of macaque monkeys, like those of humans, contain neural machinery to support face recognition. The machinery consists of a fixed number of discrete patches of face-selective cortex that can be localized with functional magnetic brain resonance imaging. The three main organizing features of this system, concentration of cells encoding the same complex object category into modules, spatial separation of modules with different functional roles for face processing, and integration of modules into an interconnected network, make it possible to break down the process of face recognition into its components. In this talk, we will present the experimental data we have obtained over the last years that characterize the major properties of this system. In particular, we will discuss results showing that a mirror symmetric face representation is computed as an intermediate step between view-tuned and view-tolerant representations. In the second part of the talk we will describe how this finding was influential in the early conception and development of M-theory, currently one of the research directions in the CBMM. We will describe and discuss a computational model of the face-processing system that is derived from M-theory and predicts and explains the core experimental finding.  This interdisciplinary project on the neural mechanisms for the processing of a stimulus set of utmost relevance for social cognition, bridges activities between three Thrusts of the CBMM.

Details

Date: 
April 18, 2014
Time: 
4:00 pm to 5:30 pm
Venue: 
Harvard University: Northwest Bldg, Room 243
Address: 

52 Oxford Street, Harvard University Northwest Building, Cambridge, 02138