The long term objectives of the proposed research are: (a) to develop a model of the functional organization of the vertebrate visual system based on comparative data from the fields of neuroanatomy, neurophysiology and neuropsychology; (b) to apply the theories and techniques of human psychophysics and scaling, information processing and perception to the animal laboratory to make use of the powerful quantitative and analytical advantages of these methods; (c) to gain a deeper understanding of the mechanisms by which specific cells groups in the vertebrate visual system, especially those that are common to most vertebrates, process visual information; (d) to exploit certain morphological and behavioral advantages that birds offer over non-human mammalian models to investigate structure-function relationships. The ultimate goal of this research is to apply the findings to a better understanding of the human visual system with a particular view towards the amelioration of visual deficits that result from injury to its central processing mechanisms.
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