PBIO SEMINAR SERIES

Has fMRI told us anything new about how the human visual system works?

Wednesday - January 23, 2008
07-08 SEMINAR SERIES

Scott Murray
University of Washington

Host: Greg Horwitz

Any new method in neuroscience is powerful in terms of evolution of the field only insofar as it tells us that something we thought we knew is wrong. So far, brain imaging has not done that." This quote by Tony Movshon, director of NYU’s Center for Neural Science, in the NY Times last year levels a common criticism towards human fMRI research. FMRI, according to this view, has not challenged any of the mechanistic models of vision derived from behavioral, human brain lesion, or animal electrophysiology methods. So what good has come of the 15 years of intensive research, hundreds of published studies, and 10’s of millions of dollars spent on fMRI studies of the human visual system? I’ll describe examples of how fMRI has been useful and not-so-useful in advancing the field of vision science and offer an account for why fMRI has, over time, become an ideal method for revealing new principles of visual processing.