Early vision, natural images.
Like the majority of the vision research community, my research interests fall under the general heading of "how the visual system reconstructs a three-dimensional world from retinal input." The sub-heading that I am particularly interested in is low-level vision: how the V1 population of neurons encodes visual information for use by other parts of the brain. My approach to the problem is to combine functional imaging experiments with computational modeling of V1 neural networks (taking advantage of known single unit data as well as inference from psychophysics) to study spatial interactions in the V1 population code. Completed projects along these lines include the contrast paper and the Gabor project. Current topics of interest include: lateral inhibition and surround suppression; separating V1-intrinsic contextual modulation from feedback modulation. For details on current vision projects, see Olman lab research page .
Magnetic Resonance Imaging.
BOLD-based fMRI detects changes in neural activity through a complicated network of vascular responses to spatially averaged synaptic activity and energy consumption. Careful imaging is important -- there are plenty of ways to get bad data and artifactual results, while good data requires careful experimental design, analysis, and interpretation. I am interested in both the physics of the imaging process and the mechanisms underlying the BOLD response. Completed projects along these lines include the PSF project, z-shim project, 3T localization project, and MTL high-resolution project (illustrated at left).
For details on current methods projects, see Olman lab research page .