{"id":108217,"date":"2020-06-05T13:44:17","date_gmt":"2020-06-05T20:44:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/06\/faces-bodies-spiders-and-radios-how-the-brain-represents-visual-objects"},"modified":"2020-06-05T13:44:17","modified_gmt":"2020-06-05T20:44:17","slug":"faces-bodies-spiders-and-radios-how-the-brain-represents-visual-objects","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/06\/faces-bodies-spiders-and-radios-how-the-brain-represents-visual-objects","title":{"rendered":"Faces, Bodies, Spiders, and Radios: How the Brain Represents Visual Objects"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/faces-bodies-spiders-and-radios-how-the-brain-represents-visual-objects.gif\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>When Plato set out to define what made a human a human, he settled on two primary characteristics: We do not have feathers, and we are bipedal (walking upright on two legs). Plato\u2019s characterization may not encompass all of what identifies a human, but his reduction of an object to its fundamental characteristics provides an example of a technique known as principal component analysis.<\/p>\n<p>Now, Caltech researchers have combined tools from machine learning and neuroscience to discover that the brain uses a mathematical system to organize visual objects according to their principal components. The work shows that the brain contains a two-dimensional map of cells representing different objects. The location of each cell in this map is determined by the principal components (or features) of its preferred objects; for example, cells that respond to round, curvy objects like faces and apples are grouped together, while cells that respond to spiky objects like helicopters or chairs form another group.<\/p>\n<p>The research was conducted in the laboratory of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbe.caltech.edu\/people\/doris-y-tsao\">Doris Tsao<\/a> (BS \u201896), professor of biology, director of the <a href=\"http:\/\/neuroscience.caltech.edu\">Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Center for Systems Neuroscience<\/a> and holder of its leadership chair, and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. A paper describing the study appears in the journal <i>Nature<\/i> on June 3.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When Plato set out to define what made a human a human, he settled on two primary characteristics: We do not have feathers, and we are bipedal (walking upright on two legs). Plato\u2019s characterization may not encompass all of what identifies a human, but his reduction of an object to its fundamental characteristics provides an [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,2229,47,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-108217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-mathematics","category-neuroscience","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108217\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}