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Vision Research

More than half of the human cerebral cortex is devoted to processing vision. Salk Institute investigators seek to understand not only how the brain and the eyes work together in order to see, but also how the brain processes visual information and integrates it to provide a coherent view of a chaotic world. They hope to better understand other complex issues as well, such as what role the visual system plays in the phenomenon we call consciousness.

Researchers are studying how signals from the eyes are relayed to the brain, creating a "map" of how the signals the eye receives are related to the neurons in the brain that process them. Ultimately, this map could serve as a blueprint from which corrective devices could be designed to restore vision due to retinal blindness.

Other Salk researchers are studying how the brain and eye stay coordinated to provide a constant picture of the world when the head is rotated or the eyes are moved. Understanding how this process works normally will help scientists figure out how to treat patients when things go wrong as a result of brain injury or stroke, for example.

Coordinating information from the different senses-like vision and hearing-is actually a very complex task for the brain, and scientists don't really understand much about how that process works. Salk researchers are exploring what happens at the edges, when this coordination breaks down, producing visual or auditory hallucinations. Understanding how this breakdown happens gives researchers insight into how the brain makes sense of conflicting information coming from different senses.

Salk researchers are also teaching computers how to accomplish tasks humans find effortless, like recognizing a face or interpreting emotion. Being able to recognize a facial expression, such as a fleeting emotion expressed when a person is lying, could make computers into extremely efficient lie detectors.

Learn more about related Salk faculty research

Tom Albright
Ed Callaway
E.J. Chichilnisky
Sasha du Lac
Fred Gage
Richard Krauzlis
John Reynolds
Terry Sejnowski
Tatyana Sharpee
Inder Verma