CAREER: Neural basis of visual shape perception

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2.

The perception of complex visual shapes is a hallmark of the primate visual system and a foundation for many of our decisions and actions. The goal of this CAREER project is to advance knowledge of how the primate brain supports this important visual capacity. The research will investigate a brain region involved in the analysis of visual shape information, identifying its organization and its role in perception. The research will employ a powerful combination of approaches: measuring and perturbing the activity of specific subsets of brain cells during behavior. The project also includes educational activities for disseminating core concepts of the research to the general public. The educational activities will focus on pre-college (K–12) students in predominantly low-income neighborhoods of New York City. New teaching materials, exhibit demos and lab-based workshops will be developed in collaboration with the non-profit organization 'BioBus' and with public outreach programs at Columbia University's Zuckerman Institute. Each activity will highlight a core principle of the research, thereby creating a fruitful integration of research and education. The collective outcome of these educational efforts will be to enhance diversity, equity, inclusion and access in science.

The CAREER project endeavors to deepen our understanding of the neural basis of visual shape perception in primates. The research will focus on elucidating the neural computations performed by visual cortical area V4—a region enriched in neurons selective for visual shape information. The research will address two major unknowns about this cortical area. The first class of experiments will use laminar recordings to characterize the organization of shape-selective neurons across V4 cortical layers. Findings from these experiments have the potential to clarify the circuit-level mechanisms underlying visual shape analysis, and may reveal key organizing principles of higher-order cortical circuits in primates. The second class of experiments will use optogenetic silencing to assess the causal role of V4 activity in the ability to perceive fine differences in shape. Findings from these experiments have the potential to establish a direct role for this cortical area in visual shape perception. The collective outcome of these research efforts will be to transform the level at which we understand visual shape processing in the primate cerebral cortex, from a largely descriptive level to a deeper mechanistic one.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.