Description of Research Expertise

KEY WORDS:
space perception, binocular vision, stereopsis, cue combination, virtual reality

RESEARCH INTERESTS
Visual perception; space perception; binocular vision, and stereopsis.

RESEARCH TECHNIQUES
Psychophysics; computational modeling; evoked potentials, fMRI

RESEARCH SUMMARY
The main research focus in Ben Backus' lab is the integration of visual information in depth perception. How does the visual system make use of multiple sources of information, in trying to interpret a visual scene or event? Because the sensory measurements are noisy (and inherently ambiguous even in the absence of noise), the visual system must continually make decisions about the most likely causes of observed sense data. Sensory measurements always contain error, so any two methods of estimating a scene parameter will, in general, disagree with one another. Therefore the visual system must be in the business of reconciling discrepant information. Current work aims to determine (1) the optimal rules for building reliable percepts under such conditions, and whether these are the rules used by the visual system; (2) the mechanisms of stereoscopic depth perception, and (3) conditions under which physically different stimuli come to have identical representations within the visual system.