Dr. Adam Steel\, Assistant Professor in Cognitive Neuroscience at < /span>University o f Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Mechanisms underlyi ng perceptual and mnemonic interaction in the brain
Natural behaviors require perceptual and mnemonic information to dynamicall y interact. For example\, when navigating\, we continuously exchange inform ation about the current percept with our memory of the surrounding environm ent. What neural mechanisms allow perceptual and mnemonic representations t o interact in the brain? Here\, I address this question in the domain of vi sual scenes using fMRI. First\, I describe a topographic dissociation betwe en the brain areas supporting perception and memory of scenes. Specifically \, a set of scene-memory related brain areas fall anterior and adjacent to areas involved in scene perception. These memory areas selectively co-fluct uate with the hippocampus during naturalistic scene understanding\, constit uting a bridge between perceptual and visuospatial representations. Second\ , using a combination of fMRI and immersive virtual reality\, I show that t hese scene-memory areas uniquely process the extent of known visuospatial c ontext currently outside of view\, consistent with a role in jointly repres enting perceptual and mnemonic information. Finally\, I show that a low-lev el coding mechanism\, retinotopy\, scaffolds the scene-perception and memor y areas’ interaction\, such that retinotopic populations in scene perceptio n and memory areas exhibit retinotopically-specific opponent responses duri ng bottom-up perception and top-down recall. Together\, these studies provi de a novel framework for understanding how perceptual and mnemonic informat ion coexist and interact in the brain\, and suggest that perceptual-grounde d neural codes play an important role in structuring interregional interact ion outside of sensory cortex.
Dr. Steel is known for his pion eering research on how the brain processes and represents visual informatio n\, with a particular focus on scene perception and spatial memory. His wor k integrates behavioral studies\, neuroimaging\, and computational approach es. Dr. Steel has published in top journals like Nature Neuroscience and Current Biology. Before his current position\, he completed postdoctoral training at Dartmouth College and earned a D.Phil. from the U niversity of Oxford.
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