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Natural or synthetic?

Neurons in visual cortex respond to all kinds of stimuli - spots, bars, gratings, noise, and photographs of supermodels. Are natural stimuli such as photographs better for figuring out how the visual system works than synthetic stimuli? The computation and systems focus features a pair of Perspectives taking separate sides of this debate. Gidon Felsen and Yang Dan present the benefits of natural stimuli , countered by Nicole Rust and Tony Movshon.

We’ve heard rumblings from the vision community about these two pieces and have received inquiries about opportunities to comment on them – here you are.

Posted by I-han Chou at 10:10 AM on December 08, 2005 | | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)
Categories: Other Contributors

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In addition to discussing the uses and abuses of natural scenes in this blog, consider voicing your opinion in a workshop at Cosyne 2006:

http://www.gatsby.ucl.ac.uk/~pel/cosyne/workshops.html#Natural_images

Gidon Felsen and Tony Movshon will be presenting their views, along with Vijay Balasubramanian,
Matteo Carandini,
Jack Gallant, Bill Giesler, Pamela Reinagel, and Eero Simoncelli.

Hope to see you there.

Nicole Rust

Posted by: Nicole Rust | December 15, 2005 12:19 PM

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