How the Brain Understands Visual Textures and Materials
Central Processing of Visual Information
This project looks at how people's brains turn visual details like texture and material appearance into the mental representations that guide decisions and behavior.
Quick facts
| Grant type | R01 grant |
|---|---|
| Study type | NIH-funded research |
| Funding institution | Weill Medical Coll of Cornell Univ NIH-funded |
| Lab location | 1 site (New York, United States) |
| Project ID | NIH-11378475 on NIH RePORTER |
What this research studies
Researchers will ask people to do visual tasks about how similar textures look and how materials appear, while collecting behavioral data. They will build and test computer models that try to match human responses and use mathematical analyses to describe the shape of perceptual representations. The team will compare performance across different tasks to see how goals and context change what people perceive. Findings will be used to link human behavior to canonical neural computations and to develop tools for analyzing perception more broadly.
Who could benefit from this research
Good fit: Ideal participants are adults who can complete visual psychophysics tasks, including people with normal vision or mild-to-moderate visual processing difficulties.
Not a fit: People with severe vision loss, major cognitive impairment, or who cannot perform the required visual tasks are unlikely to benefit or be eligible.
Why it matters
Potential benefit: If successful, this work could improve understanding of visual processing and help develop better diagnosis or therapies for people with visual perception problems.
How similar studies have performed: Earlier work from this group produced a predictive model for texture discrimination and matched human behavior well, while the task-dependent transformations explored here are newer and less tested.
Where this research is happening
New York, United States
- Weill Medical Coll of Cornell Univ — New York, United States (Active)
Researchers
- Principal investigator: Victor, Jonathan D — Weill Medical Coll of Cornell Univ
- Study coordinator: Victor, Jonathan D
About this research
- This is an active NIH-funded research project — typically early-stage science, not a clinical trial accepting patient enrollment.
- Some NIH-funded labs run parallel clinical studies or seek volunteers for related work. To check, contact the principal investigator or institution listed above.
- For full project details, budget, and progress reports, visit the official NIH RePORTER page below.