Neurobiology Faculty Candidate Talk: Christopher Henry: Context-dependent processing in cortical networks for visual perception

Our visual system generates an internal representation of objects in the world to facilitate navigation and interaction. To arrive at such a representation, neurons in cerebral cortex must determine when visual features falling on the retina should either be segregated into distinct objects in the world or be linked as arising from a common object. Neural circuits perform key computations that consider the context in which features are seen in order to create the building blocks of our robust object vision. By recording neuronal activity at different regions in macaque visual cortex, I investigate how context influences cortical processing across distinct hierarchical stages of the visual system and link these changes in cortical activity to perceptual consequences in both human and nonhuman primates.