Research into the visual cortex of primates has been a pioneering driver for linking information processing in the brain to cognitive function. Sensory input to the system can be tightly controlled and perceptual consequences probed through behavioural report. A detailed understanding of the distributed representations of elements of the visual world has allowed us to predict and modify visual perception. I will argue that the fundamental building blocks for our rich visual experience arise from signalling in extrastriate visual cortex. During development, visual experience and motor interactions with the world generate internal models of the visual world by shaping functional local circuits in visual cortex. With focal interventions at specific points in this circuitry, we can positively and predictively alter visual experience by activating defined circuit elements that are normally activated by specific content from the visual world. The more specifically we target visual neurons, the more predictively and positively we can change visual experience. Using focal microstimulation, we can artificially reverse the perceived direction of rotation of a 3D-object defined by multiple visual cues. Evidence also points to contextual factors, like expected reward and social influence, biasing visual perception through affecting this local circuitry in visual cortex. The next frontier is to generate complex visual percepts de novo from artificial signals being planted into cortex without the need for a visual stimulus. One possible approach to achieve this is to look to identify the local spatio-temporal dynamics of neuronal activity that define a specific perceptual state. These are the circuit and the patterns we will have to be able to kick start and employ, perhaps through multi-site electrical or optogenetic stimulation, in order to build successful cortical neuro-prosthetics for 3D and motion vision that would allow blind people to navigate through space.

SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY

Kristine was Marianne Fillenz’s last Bachelor in Physiological Sciences student at St. Anne’s College. Marianne’s Neuroscience and Physiology tutorials and her rigorous focus on experimental evidence significantly shaped Kristine’s scientific journey. After the Bachelor, Kristine undertook her DPhil in the University Laboratory of Physiology at Oxford, researching visual map formation in the visual cortex of hamsters and ferrets with Ian D. Thompson as a Wellcome Prize Scholar. Her thesis received the BNA thesis prize and the Rolleston Memorial Prize from Oxford. After postdoctoral research positions at the Max-Planck-Institute for biological Cybernetics in Tübingen, Germany and Oxford, where she worked on the neural mechanisms of 3D visual processing in the macaque brain, she held Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin and University Research Fellowships at DPAG. In 2014, she was promoted to Associate Professor in Neuroscience. Kristine moved in 2019 to the Otto-von-Guericke-University and the Leibniz-Institute in Neurobiology in Magdeburg, Germany as Heisenberg- Professor (DFG) and Chair in Sensory Physiology. The main focus of her research is to elucidate the neuronal signals and interactions that shapes our vivid perceptual experience of the dynamic, three-dimensional world around us.