The Center for Cognitive Neuroscience in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT proposes to create a research training program in Visual Cognition. The program is based on the beliefs that vision is central to the understanding of the mind, and that it now can only be studied in a way that integrates knowledge and methods from many traditional disciplines (cognitive psychology, psychophysics, neuroscience, neuropsychology, Computer vision). This requires new generations of scientists whose training encompasses all these disciplines. MIT is an especially suitable site for such a program because of its long history of accomplishments in vision science (both research and training), the unusual composition of the department (experimental psychology, computation, and neuroscience), and the existence of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, which provides the experience and infrastructure for an interdisciplinary training program. The program would provide six predoctoral and two postdoctoral students with core courses in cognitive science and neuroscience, foundational courses in vision, visual cognition, and computation, early and extensive research experience, the guidance of two advisors (in two different areas among the three constituting the department), oral and written qualifying exams, research seminars, experience and training in undergraduate teaching, close oversight of progress, repeated oral presentations, and immersion in a peer culture of students and fellows interested in visual cognition.
| Brady, Timothy F; Oliva, Aude (2008) Statistical learning using real-world scenes: extracting categorical regularities without conscious intent. Psychol Sci 19:678-85 |
| Brady, Timothy F; Konkle, Talia; Alvarez, George A et al. (2008) Visual long-term memory has a massive storage capacity for object details. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 105:14325-9 |
