Project Description
Doors of Perception: Through Which Experience Reaches the Brain

Sight
How our brain is able to interpret photons into meaningful information has intrigued philosophers, psychologists and neuroscientists for generations. This problem continues to hold the attention of researchers all over the world.
Hubel and Wiesel propelled a generation of scientists to deconstruct how the brain gives us sight. Former students trained in their labs are now advancing those early insights. Margaret Livingstone studies how facial recognition and processing occurs in the visual cortex, and the ways in which neurons respond to different aspects of visual information. Richard Born also studies the visual cortex of behaving monkeys, and examines how distinct aspects of visual information guide decision making. John Assad studies how sensory information impacts attention and other internal states, like motivation. David Cox is reverse engineering the visual brain using computer modeling in an effort to understand the principles underlying vision.
At a different level of resolution, Joshua Sanes in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology and Center for Brain Science, and Connie Cepko in the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School ,both study the genes that regulate the development of retinal cells and the precise assembly of the many retinal cells into circuits. Using molecular tools, they are able to examine the contribution of these genes to circuit assembly.
Early pioneers in research about the eye and vision on Brain Tour Edward Tichener and George Wald.

Smell and Taste

Touch
