Writing Response #5:   Recognition under Occlusion

The following paper is required reading for the week of October 19th:

Tang, H., Buia, C., Madhavan, R., Crone, N. E., Madsen, J. R., Anderson, W. A. & Kreiman, G. (2014) Spatiotemporal Dynamics Underlying Object Completion in Human Ventral Visual Cortex, Neuron, 83, 1-13.

In advance of Wednesday's presentation and discussion of this reading, you should submit a response to the following question:

The Tang et al. paper provides evidence that along the ventral visual pathway, neural responses remain selective for particular object categories even when objects are partially occluded, but this selectivity emerges about 100 ms later (on average) when a substantial part of the object is hidden from view. In Figures 2D, 2E, and 2F, and similarly in Figures 3D, 3E, and 3F, the results of three different analyses of the data are presented to support these conclusions. Why are these multiple analyses necessary? In your response, briefly describe each technique, what information it provides, and why it is critical to support the authors' main conclusions.

You should write at most one page (500 words) in response to this question. In addition, you should also submit a question of your own, related to the reading. This writing assignment is due on Tuesday, October 20 at midnight and should be submitted to the 9.523 course site on stellar using your private account: https://stellar.mit.edu/S/course/9/fa15/9.523/. If you have a problem with submitting to stellar, please send your response to Ellen Hildreth at ehildreth@wellesley.edu.