Bevil Conway | |
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Born | Salisbury, Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbabwe) | 4 November 1974
Alma mater | |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Neuroscience |
Bevil Conway is a neuroscientist and artist, and an expert in color. [1] Conway specialises in visual perception in his scientific work, and he often explores the limitations of the visual system in his artwork. At Wellesley College, Conway was Knafel Assistant Professor of Natural Science from 2007 to 2011, and associate professor of Neuroscience until 2016. He was a founding member of the Neuroscience Department at ey. Prior to joining the Wellesley faculty, Conway helped establish the Kathmandu University Medical School in Nepal, where he taught as assistant professor in 2002–03. He currently[ as of? ] runs the Sensation, Cognition and Action Unit [2] in the Laboratory of Sensorimotor Research at the National Eye Institute and the National Institute of Mental Health.
Conway was educated at McGill University and Harvard University. On finishing his PhD and post-doctoral work under Margaret Livingstone and David Hubel, Conway was elected a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows, and spent a year as an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the University of Bremen, Germany. Conway has held grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, [3] the Whitehall Foundation, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. [4]
Conway's research originally set out to explore the principle of double opponency in the primate visual system, showing (in 2001 [5] and 2006 [6] ) that color cells in the first stage of cortical processing (V1) compute local ratios of cone activity, making them both color-opponent (red-green and blue-yellow) and spatially opponent, pinning them down as the likely basis for color constancy and the brain's building blocks for constructing hue.
Subsequent work has focused on the representation of color in extrastriate areas of the brain that receive input from V1. In collaboration with Doris Tsao, he used fMRI to identify such functionally defined regions and coined the term "globs" to describe them. In 2007 he used targeted single-unit recording techniques to characterise the behaviour of cells in these color areas, showing that individual neurons in these areas respond selectively to specific hues. [7] The behaviour of these cells and the networks they are involved in are the current focus of his work. [8] By comparing the responses to colors, faces, bodies, places, and objects, Conway's work uncovered the multi-stage parallel processing organization of inferior temporal cortex. This work suggests that IT implements a set of canonical operations in parallel: in Conway's framework, the face-patch network is simply one manifestation of the operations carried out by IT. [9] In a 2023 opinion essay, Conway and his coauthors rendered their final judgement: “the [Opponent Colors] theory is wrong”. [10]
Conway's scientific account of #thedress has become the standard account of the phenomenon. [11] [12] [13] Empirical work by Conway and Ted Gibson on how languages name colors provided evidence that reconciled relativist and universalist accounts, connecting color perception to behavior. [14] [15]
Much of Conway's research is guided by the underlying thought that visual art can be used to reveal insights about how visual information is processed. [16] An ongoing research project examines the idea that poor stereopsis may be an asset to artists (the startling finding that Rembrandt may have lacked stereopsis was widely discussed in the media). [17] [18] His interest in the dove-tailing of science and art has also spawned an interdisciplinary upper level course at Wellesley, Vision and Art: Physics, Physiology, Perception, and Practice. [19] Conway has promoted engagement of museums with neuroscience, [20] serving as an advisor to the Peabody Essex Museum in the PEM neuroscience initiative. [21]
As an artist Conway is active in visual media, predominantly watercolors, oils, and prints. He is regularly a visiting artist at the Columbus College of Art and Design. [22] A larger, ongoing project is a series of sculptures in the shape of glass boxes. [23] [24] His interest is driven by fundamental questions of art making: How do brain and visual apparatus co-operate in making an art object? What is the role of muscle memory in making marks on paper and, more broadly, in the creative process? How do artists challenge the constraints and limitations of our visual system? His works are in the collection of the Fogg Art Museum, private collections in Europe, North America and Africa, and have been featured in books and commercials. [24]
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(help)The visual cortex of the brain is the area of the cerebral cortex that processes visual information. It is located in the occipital lobe. Sensory input originating from the eyes travels through the lateral geniculate nucleus in the thalamus and then reaches the visual cortex. The area of the visual cortex that receives the sensory input from the lateral geniculate nucleus is the primary visual cortex, also known as visual area 1 (V1), Brodmann area 17, or the striate cortex. The extrastriate areas consist of visual areas 2, 3, 4, and 5.
In color theory, hue is one of the main properties of a color, defined technically in the CIECAM02 model as "the degree to which a stimulus can be described as similar to or different from stimuli that are described as red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet," within certain theories of color vision.
Color constancy is an example of subjective constancy and a feature of the human color perception system which ensures that the perceived color of objects remains relatively constant under varying illumination conditions. A green apple for instance looks green to us at midday, when the main illumination is white sunlight, and also at sunset, when the main illumination is red. This helps us identify objects.
Color vision, a feature of visual perception, is an ability to perceive differences between light composed of different frequencies independently of light intensity. Color perception is a part of the larger visual system and is mediated by a complex process between neurons that begins with differential stimulation of different types of photoreceptors by light entering the eye. Those photoreceptors then emit outputs that are propagated through many layers of neurons and then ultimately to the brain. Color vision is found in many animals and is mediated by similar underlying mechanisms with common types of biological molecules and a complex history of evolution in different animal taxa. In primates, color vision may have evolved under selective pressure for a variety of visual tasks including the foraging for nutritious young leaves, ripe fruit, and flowers, as well as detecting predator camouflage and emotional states in other primates.
The visual system comprises the sensory organ and parts of the central nervous system which gives organisms the sense of sight as well as enabling the formation of several non-image photo response functions. It detects and interprets information from the optical spectrum perceptible to that species to "build a representation" of the surrounding environment. The visual system carries out a number of complex tasks, including the reception of light and the formation of monocular neural representations, colour vision, the neural mechanisms underlying stereopsis and assessment of distances to and between objects, the identification of a particular object of interest, motion perception, the analysis and integration of visual information, pattern recognition, accurate motor coordination under visual guidance, and more. The neuropsychological side of visual information processing is known as visual perception, an abnormality of which is called visual impairment, and a complete absence of which is called blindness. Non-image forming visual functions, independent of visual perception, include the pupillary light reflex and circadian photoentrainment.
In neuroanatomy, the lateral geniculate nucleus is a structure in the thalamus and a key component of the mammalian visual pathway. It is a small, ovoid, ventral projection of the thalamus where the thalamus connects with the optic nerve. There are two LGNs, one on the left and another on the right side of the thalamus. In humans, both LGNs have six layers of neurons alternating with optic fibers.
The parietal lobe is one of the four major lobes of the cerebral cortex in the brain of mammals. The parietal lobe is positioned above the temporal lobe and behind the frontal lobe and central sulcus.
Neuroesthetics is a relatively recent sub-discipline of applied aesthetics. Empirical aesthetics takes a scientific approach to the study of aesthetic experience of art, music, or any object that can give rise to aesthetic judgments. Neuroesthetics is a term coined by Semir Zeki in 1999 and received its formal definition in 2002 as the scientific study of the neural bases for the contemplation and creation of a work of art. Neuroesthetics uses neuroscience to explain and understand the aesthetic experiences at the neurological level. The topic attracts scholars from many disciplines including neuroscientists, art historians, artists, art therapists and psychologists.
The opponent process is a color theory that states that the human visual system interprets information about color by processing signals from photoreceptor cells in an antagonistic manner. The opponent-process theory suggests that there are three opponent channels, each comprising an opposing color pair: red versus green, blue versus yellow, and black versus white (luminance). The theory was first proposed in 1892 by the German physiologist Ewald Hering.
Multisensory integration, also known as multimodal integration, is the study of how information from the different sensory modalities may be integrated by the nervous system. A coherent representation of objects combining modalities enables animals to have meaningful perceptual experiences. Indeed, multisensory integration is central to adaptive behavior because it allows animals to perceive a world of coherent perceptual entities. Multisensory integration also deals with how different sensory modalities interact with one another and alter each other's processing.
The inferior temporal gyrus is one of three gyri of the temporal lobe and is located below the middle temporal gyrus, connected behind with the inferior occipital gyrus; it also extends around the infero-lateral border on to the inferior surface of the temporal lobe, where it is limited by the inferior sulcus. This region is one of the higher levels of the ventral stream of visual processing, associated with the representation of objects, places, faces, and colors. It may also be involved in face perception, and in the recognition of numbers and words.
The colour centre is a region in the brain primarily responsible for visual perception and cortical processing of colour signals received by the eye, which ultimately results in colour vision. The colour centre in humans is thought to be located in the ventral occipital lobe as part of the visual system, in addition to other areas responsible for recognizing and processing specific visual stimuli, such as faces, words, and objects. Many functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies in both humans and macaque monkeys have shown colour stimuli to activate multiple areas in the brain, including the fusiform gyrus and the lingual gyrus. These areas, as well as others identified as having a role in colour vision processing, are collectively labelled visual area 4 (V4). The exact mechanisms, location, and function of V4 are still being investigated.
In cognitive neuroscience, visual modularity is an organizational concept concerning how vision works. The way in which the primate visual system operates is currently under intense scientific scrutiny. One dominant thesis is that different properties of the visual world require different computational solutions which are implemented in anatomically/functionally distinct regions that operate independently – that is, in a modular fashion.
The posterior parietal cortex plays an important role in planned movements, spatial reasoning, and attention.
Visual perception is the ability to interpret the surrounding environment through photopic vision, color vision, scotopic vision, and mesopic vision, using light in the visible spectrum reflected by objects in the environment. This is different from visual acuity, which refers to how clearly a person sees. A person can have problems with visual perceptual processing even if they have 20/20 vision.
Globs are millimeter-sized color modules found beyond the visual area V2 in the brain's color processing ventral pathway. They are scattered throughout the posterior inferior temporal cortex in an area called the V4 complex. They are clustered by color preference, and organized as color columns. They are the first part of the brain in which color is processed in terms of the full range of hues found in color space.
A parasol cell, sometimes called an M cell or M ganglion cell, is one type of retinal ganglion cell (RGC) located in the ganglion cell layer of the retina. These cells project to magnocellular cells in the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) as part of the magnocellular pathway in the visual system. They have large cell bodies as well as extensive branching dendrite networks and as such have large receptive fields. Relative to other RGCs, they have fast conduction velocities. While they do show clear center-surround antagonism, they receive no information about color. Parasol ganglion cells contribute information about the motion and depth of objects to the visual system.
Doris Ying Tsao is an American systems neuroscientist and professor of biology at the University of California, Berkeley. She was formerly on the faculty at the California Institute of Technology. She is recognized for pioneering the use of fMRI with single-unit electrophysiological recordings and for discovering the macaque face patch system for face perception. She is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and the director of the T&C Chen Center for Systems Neuroscience. She won a MacArthur "Genius" fellowship in 2018. Tsao was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2020.
Social cognitive neuroscience is the scientific study of the biological processes underpinning social cognition. Specifically, it uses the tools of neuroscience to study "the mental mechanisms that create, frame, regulate, and respond to our experience of the social world". Social cognitive neuroscience uses the epistemological foundations of cognitive neuroscience, and is closely related to social neuroscience. Social cognitive neuroscience employs human neuroimaging, typically using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Human brain stimulation techniques such as transcranial magnetic stimulation and transcranial direct-current stimulation are also used. In nonhuman animals, direct electrophysiological recordings and electrical stimulation of single cells and neuronal populations are utilized for investigating lower-level social cognitive processes.
Peter H. Schiller is a professor emeritus of Neuroscience in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is well known for his work on the behavioral, neurophysiological and pharmacological studies of the primate visual and oculomotor systems.