We rely heavily on visual perception to guide ourselves around the world. Our brain is very good at processing visual information about different shapes, colors and brightness variations. However, the meaning of an object is not an intrinsic physical feature of the object, but is also defined by internal representations in our brain, often based on past experience. Thus visual perception is not just the processing of information about the physical attributes of what we see, but the combination of these with the internal representations the brain already has. How is it that our memory and expectations influence our visual perception? That’s what we are trying to find out.

Dr. Tiago Siebert Altavini is a neuroscientist working in the Laboratory of Neurobiology at The Rockefeller University. He was an undergrad at the University of Brasilia and obtained his PhD from the University of Rio Grande do Norte, where he worked with Dr. Kerstin Schmidt at the University’s Brain Institute. His PhD research focused on the visual connections in the brain and their influence in patterns of spontaneous brain activity. He currently works with Dr. Charles Gilbert, to investigate the top-down influence of feedback connections on object recognition. The aim of such research is to understand the mechanisms by which expectation influences visual perception.

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