HCC Seminar Series: "From Photons to Neurons: A Neuro-Ophthalmic Approach to Virtual Reality"

Abstract

A significant amount of Virtual Reality (VR) research has focused on understanding spatial perception and behavior. Nearly all of this research has been psychophysical in nature, operating on the assumption that patterns in behavior reflect patterns in perception. Though psychophysics is a powerful tool for studying perception-action couplings, it is limited in what it can reveal about perception itself. At its most fundamental, perception is a matter of neural processing and representation; thus, a percept is a strictly neural construct. In this talk, we will discuss our efforts to bridge this gap by incorporating methods from neuroscience, vision science, and ophthalmology into VR spatial perception research. As part of this approach, we conceptualize visual spatial processing as an information pipeline consisting of a series of geometric, neural, and behavioral transformations. We will also share our current and preliminary findings using these approaches to explore spatial perception.

Biography

J. Adam Jones is an Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at Mississippi State University, where he directs the High-Fidelity Virtual Environments (Hi5) Lab. His research takes a “photos-to-neurons” approach to studying spatial vision in both virtual reality and real-world settings. His most recent work focuses on incorporating methods from computer science, neuro science, ophthalmology, and psychology to improve virtual reality and expand our understanding of spatial vision. This research is supported by the National Science Foundation CAREER program. His teaching spans topics such as virtual reality, computer graphics, data science, human-centered computing, spatial perception, and fundamentals of computer science. In addition to teaching and research, Jones serves as director of the Applied Neuroscience Program, associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, and associate editor of Frontiers in Virtual Reality.