Maryam Azadi

Program: Neurosciences

Current advisor: Tom P. Franken, MD, PhD

Undergraduate university: Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, 2012

Enrollment year: 2022

Research summary
Process of borders in primate visual cortex

Vision is remarkably good at segmenting objects from background in complex scenes. Portions of objects may be missing, which can lead to the perception of illusory contours, revealing the constructive nature of perception. Another important challenge is the common presence of spatially varying illumination (shadows), which can be devastating to segment objects. One prominent segmentation signal in the visual cortex of primate animals is tuning for border ownership (BOS). BOS neurons signal which side of a border is foreground (“owns” the border). BOS neurons in cortical area V4 are organized in columns in which BOS is computed first in deep cortical layers, suggesting an importance for recurrent processing. Many questions remain about border computations. Borders are perceptually owned by one side at a time, suggesting a role for inhibition, but no prior study attempted to distinguish cell types. It is also unknown how these cells process other border types, such as illusory contours and shadow borders. Here I propose to address these gaps using Neuropixels in V4 in behaving macaques.

Graduate publications