Advanced Visual Neuroscience (BIOS3001)

NEUR3001/NEURG001 Advanced Visual Neuroscience

An interdisciplinary course on the Anatomy, Physiology and Psychophysics of Vision

The full unit includes the NEUR3045 Visual Neuroscience half-unit as well as the additional lectures and requirements listed below.

This course will teach advanced visual neuroscience from a broad, interdisciplinary point of view. Our modern understanding of vision and visual processing depends not only on the more traditional fields of anatomy, physiology and psychophysics, which remain centrally important, but also on the fields of genetics, molecular and cellular biology, ophthalmology, neurology, cognitive neuroscience and brain imaging. In this course, we will present visual neuroscience as a multidisciplinary, yet integrated field of study.

Aims:The aim is to provide students with an understanding of the functional anatomy and neurophysiology of the visual system, and an understanding of how neural activity results in visual perception and in behaviours that depend on vision. Students will be introduced to a variety of methods for investigating visual neuroscience including molecular biology, psychophysics, single cell recording, electrophysiology, brain imaging, and the experimental study of patients with brain damage or genetic defects.

Summary of Course Content: The course presents a multidisciplinary approach to vision. It will cover anatomical, physiological, genetic, molecular and psychological approaches. The first part of the course, which can be taken as a separate half unit, covers the fundamentals of visual neuroscience from the visual input at the retina to visual perception. The topics range from retinal imaging, visual transduction, the functional anatomy of the retina and LGN, cortical processing to higher level visual functions, such as colour, depth, space, and motion perception. The second part of the course, which completes the full unit, will cover advanced topics including the neural development of the retina, visual development in babies and infants, more in depth coverage of retinal and cortical processing, fMRI, object and face recognition, visual memory, vision and action, colour, space, depth, motion and form perception, high level cortical processing, neurology and ophthalmology.

Students who take the full-unit will be provided with a strong foundation in visual neuroscience as well as an extensive and unique coverage of the topic that reflects the remarkable diversity of local expertise in vision and visual neuroscience at UCL.