Research
My lab's research is aimed at the long-term objective of understanding human visual perception, particularly low-level neural mechanisms that are functionally relevant in everyday life. Natural scenes in our visual world are filled with objects delineated from their backgrounds not only by simple changes in luminance or colour, but also by differences in other attributes such as contrast, texture, or motion. An important goal is to understand how early visual processing detects and utilizes these rich cues to provide a robust perception of "figure-ground" and local depth relationships in the real world. Projects within the lab employ a variety of approaches, including human psychophysics, single unit electrophysiology, optical imaging, and computational modeling.
email: curtis dot baker at mcgill dot ca
My web site is presently under reconstruction. However our most recent papers and posters (below) can give a good idea of what we are currently doing.
Selected Recent Presentations
Talebi V, Baker CL Jr (2012) Natural image-derived spatiotemporal receptive fields of visual cortex neurons. Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting, Oct 2012. Program No. 571.15
Yoonessi A, Baker CL Jr (2012) Gaze behavior during motion parallax. Vision Science Society, May 2012. Journal of Vision 12(9): 1008.
Li G, Wang Z, Yao Z, Yuan N, Talebi V, Tan J, Wang Y, Zhou Y, Baker CL Jr (2011) Form-cue invariant second-order contrast envelope responses in macaque V2. Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting, Nov 2011. Program No. 271.08 [poster]
Arsenault EA, Baker CL Jr (2011) Segmentation mechanisms are sensitive to and can segment by higher-order statistics in naturalistic textures. Vision Science Society, May 2011. Journal of Vision 11(11):1160 [poster]
Yoonessi A, Baker CL Jr (2011) Segmentation and depth from motion parallax-induced dynamic occlusion. Vision Science Society, May 2011. Journal of Vision 11(11): 62 [poster]
Gharat AM, Baker CL Jr (2010) Motion-defined contour processing in early visual cortex. Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting, 2010. Program No. 74.3 [poster]
Talebi V, Baker CL Jr (2010) Neural models derived from natural images better predict responses to arbitrary stimuli. Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting, 2010. Program No. 73.2 [poster]
Li G, Baker CL Jr (2010) Local organization of second-order processing in early visual cortex: Evidence from spikes and local field potentials. Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting, 2010. Program No. 483.2 [poster]
Arsenault EA, Baker CL Jr (2010) The role of higher-order statistics in naturalistic texture segmentation: Modelling psychophysical data. Vision Science Society, May 2010. Journal of Vision 10(7):1354 [poster]
Recent Publications
Yoonessi A, Baker CL Jr (2011) Contribution of motion parallax to segmentation and depth perception. Journal of Vision 11(9):13,1-21.
Arsenault EA, Yoonessi A, Baker CL Jr (2011) Higher-order texture statistics impair contrast boundary segmentation. Journal of Vision 11(10):14,1-15.
Talebi V, Baker CL Jr (2012) Natural vs. synthetic stimuli for estimating receptive field models: A comparison of predictive robustness. Journal of Neuroscience 32(5):1560-1576.
Li G, Baker CL Jr (2012) Functional organization of envelope-responsive neurons in early visual cortex: Organization of carrier tuning properties. Journal of Neuroscience 32(22):7538-7549.
Gharat A, Baker CL Jr (2012) Motion-defined contour processing in early visual cortex. Journal of Neurophysiology 108:1228-1243.
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