When: 29 September 2021, 10h00
Where: Room Euler Violet (Euler Building)
Speaker: Dr. Benoit Cottereau (website)
Institution: Centre de Recherche Cerveau & Cognition (CerCo) CNRS UMR 5549
Title: Optic flow processing in man, monkey and machine
Abstract: Optic flow is the pattern of motion that falls on our retinas when we move within our environment. It can be used by our visual system to monitor heading or walking speed. In this talk, I will present recent works from my team which clarified where and how optic flow is processed in the primate brain. I will first describe the results of neuroimaging experiments realized in both humans and macaques which determined the cortical networks processing optic flow in these two species and suggest that they are very similar. I will then show how computational approaches based on spiking neural networks and unsupervised learning can model how optic flow selectivity emerges from visual experience during development. Finally, I will present psychophysical results showing how optic flow is processed in patients suffering from macular degeneration.
Short bio: Benoit Cottereau is a CNRS researcher at the Cerco laboratory where he co-directs the SV3M (Spatial Vision in Man, Monkey and Machine) team. He is also the co-responsible of the neuroscience master program of Toulouse III University. He was trained as a signal processing engineer and completed a PhD in multi-modal neuroimaging in the LENA laboratory (CNRS UPR 640, Paris) and a post-doctoral internship in visual neurosciences at Stanford University. His research aims at understanding spatial vision from a multi-model (human, monkey, machine) and trans-disciplinary (behaviour, neuroimaging, modelling) approach. His work has numerous clinical applications (e.g., for patients suffering from visual pathologies such as macular degeneration) and technological outputs (e.g., for developing artificial vision systems).
