Mathematics and Cognition  Seminar

Spring 2002

Tuesdays 12:15  Goldwater 604

(Supported in part by the Systems Science and Engineering Research Center)

Seminar Schedule:<http://math.la.asu.edu/~tom/cognition/math+cogsched.html>

The Mathematics and Cognition, Joint with the Stochastic Modeling Seminar Series, will
present our next lecture on Tuesday, February 19, at 12:15 PM in GWC 604.
Our speaker will be John Black, President of Micrology pbt, Inc. and the Dept of Computer Science,
who will speak on the topic:

"Modeling the human visual system from the bottom up, and from the top down"

Abstract.

 
Broadly speaking, the human visual system can be partitioned into two major parts (1) the early visual system, which processes visual input from the retina in a bottom-up manner and (2) the "higher" visual processing centers, which process the output of the early visual system in a top-down manner.

A great deal has been learned about the early visual system - enough to construct rudimentary models that show the mechanisms by which it processes the retinal image. This talk will present a model designed by John, and show some processed images that are produced by that model.

Much less is understood about top-down processing - not really enough to model it successfully. Psychologists have explored top-down processing to some degree, but there is still a "Semantic gap" between low-level (bottom-up) processing and high-level (top-down) processing. This talk will review some recent work that John has done, in an attempt to narrow this gap.