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List of Past Events
Optimality and Probabilistic Computation in Visual Categorization
Dr. Wei Ji Ma
From Monday, February 17, 2014 - 11:00am
To Sunday, February 16, 2014 - 12:00am
New York University, Department of Psychology and Center for Neural Science
In models of perception under uncertainty, the terms “optimal” and “probabilistic” are often used interchangeably. I will argue that they have distinct meanings and are associated with different experimental designs. I will then present two recent studies: a) a complex visual search task with simple stimuli, in which optimality, not simplicity seems to govern behavior; b) a visual categorization task under ambiguity, in which human and monkey behavior is probabilistic, but not necessarily optimal. In the latter task, I also show how the computation can be implemented by a plausible neural network, using a coding scheme known as probabilistic population coding. Finally, I will discuss V1 population recordings from monkeys performing this task.
