Calibrating Perception

Sensory systems are constantly recalibrating their sensitivity and response properties to match the statistics of the current stimulus environment. These adaptations are intrinsic to neural coding and affect all stages of processing, profoundly impacting every perceptual experience. In our work we explore how vision is adapted to the natural visual world, and how it adjusts to changes in the world (e.g. as we move to a different environment) or to changes in the observer (e.g. as we age). Because these calibrations fit the mind to the world, adaptation predicts that physiologically identical observers living in different environments will experience their worlds in very different ways, while observers exposed to the same world will have similar perceptual experiences, even if their visual systems are very different.