When you click the Amazon logo to the left of any citation and purchase the book (or other media) from Amazon.com, MIT OpenCourseWare will receive up to 10% of this purchase and any other purchases you make during that visit. This will not increase the cost of your purchase. Links provided are to the US Amazon site, but you can also support OCW through Amazon sites in other regions. Learn more.

Overview

We are now at an unprecedented point in the field of neuroscience: We can watch the human brain in action as it sees, thinks, decides, reads, and remembers. Using the technique of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), local neural activity can be monitored in the normal human brain in a noninvasive fashion and with good spatial resolution. A large number of far-reaching and fundamental questions about the human mind and brain can now be answered using straightforward applications of this technology. This is particularly true in the area of high-level vision, the study of how we interpret and use visual information (including object recognition, visual attention, perceptual awareness, visually guided action, visual memory, and other topics).

The goals of this course are to help students to become savvy and critical readers of the current neuroimaging literature, to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the technique, and to design their own cutting-edge, theoretically motivated studies. Students will read, present to the class, and critique current neuroimaging articles, as well as write detailed proposals for experiments of their own. Lectures will cover theoretical background on some of the major areas in high-level vision, as well as an overview of what fMRI has taught us and can in future teach us about each of these topics. Lectures and discussions will also cover fMRI methods and experimental design. A prior course in statistics and at least one course in perception or cognition are required.

Text and Readings

There are required readings of primary research articles for each class session.

Other useful textbooks include:

Huettel, Scott A., Allen W. Song, and Gregory McCarthy. Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging. 1st ed. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates, 2004. ISBN: 0878932887.

Farah, Martha J. Visual Agnosia. 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004. ISBN: 0262062380.

———. The Cognitive Neuroscience of Vision. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2000. ISBN: 0631214038.

Assignments and Exams

Assignments include a written paper critique, two class presentations and a term paper. There is one quiz.

Grading