Transmission of Information in the Visual System

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How do we identify an object from the features that we detect? Understanding how the brain recognizes objects might give insight into how the brain solves problems in general. The object recognition problem has withstood a century of attempts, but we bring new tools ¿ fruits of the last grant period ¿ that allow us to sketch the outlines of a solution. Four approaches, all new and different, converge on one answer. AIM 1. Use crowding, along with other manipulations, to characterize three parallel processes in reading by normal and dyslexic readers. AIM 2. Count features by probability summation. Extending traditional probability summation from explaining just detection to also explain object identification, we acquire a new tool, allowing us to count the number of features the observer must detect in order to identify. AIM 3. Capture the observer's classification algorithm by computer modeling of the observer's responses to thousands of letters in white noise. We use statistical learning theory to build a classifier that accounts for human performance. The observer classifies each of several thousand images of a letter in noise as "a", "b", or "c", etc. These classifications are data that can tell us what the observer is doing. We use a powerful statistical learning algorithm to create a simple classifier that best models human performance. AIM 4. fMRI: Where in the brain are letters identified? Correlate the activation of the "letter" area in the left fusiform gyrus, and elsewhere, with two psychophysically-discovered signatures of letter identification: fast learning and channel frequency. Thus techniques from cognition, perception, statistical learning theory, and physiology together will reveal what is computed where, in the brain, when an observer identifies an object.