Processing of visual information

Joint winners of the 2005 Henry Dale Prize will be giving a short presentation on their work.

Since the discovery of x-rays in 1895, physicists and engineers have provided clinicians with a range of techniques to see inside the human body. While the images obtained from mammograms and MRI scans are useful, we can gain a better insight into the workings of the human body by combining these images. Recent increases in computer power have enabled us to do this and we can now build a better picture of certain abnormalities –like cancer, as well as investigate cognitive processes such as perception. We rely on perception – the use of built-in knowledge of the external world – to eliminate ambiguities in the information our eye receives. But to what extent are these perceptual mechanisms innate rather than acquired? Consider the unusual condition of synesthesia, which arises when a gene mutation results in the senses being muddled up causing the tasting of shapes or hearing of colours. Studies of brain images have helped us to pin down the neural locus of this disorder, as well as help us understand just what makes the brain so unique. Professor Sir Michael Brady, (BP Professor of Information Engineering at the University of Oxford) and Professor Ramachandran (Director of the Center for the Brain and Cognition at the University of California) are joint winners of the2005 Henry Dale Prize. They will each be giving a short presentation on their work, as well as raising questions on the future possibilities of interdisciplinary research in their fields. This event will be chaired by Baroness Susan Greenfield.

The Henry Dale Prize is awarded by the Ri and supported by the Kohn Foundation.

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