The cognitive neuroscience of object recognition and learning.

The human brain is so successful in what it does that much of these accomplishments go unnoticed. Object and face recognition is a representative example of this paradox. Whereas computers exist that can beat human chess masters, engineers have not yet been able to create artificial intelligent devices with the same object recognition capabilities as the human brain. The brain has a unique solution that also underlies its capacities in many other situations that require a flexible, intelligent response in a complex environment. Instead of relying on the physical information as it activates the sensory receptors, the brain constructs a useful and flexible representation of the environment in terms of more psychological and task-relevant dimensions. Through a variety of neuroscientific and behavioral techniques we are showing how the processing of visual shape dimensions and learning processes contribute to our superior object and face recognition capabilities.

Keywords:Object recognition

Disciplines:Biological and physiological psychology, General psychology, Other psychology and cognitive sciences