External speakers: Sebastiaan Mathot. The role of pupil size in visual perception

What: The role of pupil size in visual perception

Where: Online talk; BCBL Auditorium Zoom room (If you would like to attend to this meeting reserve at info@bcbl.eu)

Who: Sebastiaan Mathot. PhD, Associate Professor, Department of experimental psychology, University of Groningen, The Netherlands

When:  Thursday,  Oct 16th at 12:00 PM noon.

Visual perception starts as soon as light passes through the lens of the eye, before even touching the retina. Large pupils allow more light to enter the eye, thus enhancing visual sensitivity. Small pupils allow light to be better focused, thus enhancing visual acuity. Vision scientists rarely consider this earliest level of visual processing, yet it is a crucial component of vision. In this talk, I will review a series of studies describing how pupil size affects visual processing at different levels: retina, visual cortex, and behavior. I will also describe how higher-level cognition affects pupil size, and how this (in some cases) reflects a form sensory tuning: a subtle adjustment of pupil size to meet the demands of the current situation and the immediate future.