Workshop on
Natural Environments Tasks and Intelligence



Friday, March 28
Saturday, March 29
Sunday, March 30


Friday, March 28

Opening remarks
8:30 Wilson Geisler Natural systems analysis

Characterizing information in natural scenes
9:00 Lawrence Cormack Disparity statistics in natural scenes
9:30 Eero Simoncelli Statistical models of visual images (tba)
10:00 Break
10:30 Michael Lewicki Generalizing over regions of natural images: A theoretical model for complex cells and other non-linear receptive field properties
11:00 Song-Chun Zhu Information scaling and manifold learning in natural images and video
11:30 Discussion
12:00 Lunch

Neural representation of natural scenes
1:30 Dario Ringach The operating point of the cortex: Neurons as large deviation detectors
2:00 David Brainard Natural image statistics and the trichromatic cone mosaic
2:30 Break
3:00 Bruno Olshausen Learning 'what' and 'where' decompositions of time-varying natural images via amplitude and phase decomposition
3:30 Aude Oliva Human capacity and fidelity of natural image representation
4:00 Discussion
5:00 Reception


Saturday, March 29

Integrating vision and action
9:00 David Knill The role of visual short-term memory in planning goal-directed hand movements
9:30 Martin Banks Scene statistics and prior expectations in depth perception
10:00 Break
10:30 Miguel Eckstein Mechanisms by which cues and context aid visual search
11:00 Laurent Itti Quantitative modeling of gaze control in natural tasks
11:30 Discussion
12:00 Lunch

Poster Session
1:30-3:30


Lab Tours

3:30-5:00



Sunday, March 30

Computational challenges of natural tasks
9:00 Laurence Maloney Bayesian decision theory as a framework for perception and action
9:30 Dana Ballard Computational models of embodied cognition
10:00 Break
10:30 Wayne Gray The interactive routine as key construct in theories of interactive behavior
11:00 Emo Todorov Intelligent control of complex systems: How brains do it and how engineers could do it
11:30 Discussion
12:00 Lunch

Action in real and virtual environments
1:30 Michael Land Eye movements and actions: knowing where to look
2:00 Mary Hayhoe Factors controlling allocation of gaze in dynamic environments
2:30 Break
3:00 Heinrich Bülthoff Multisensory integration for action in natural and virtual environments
3:30 Discussion

Concluding remarks; general discussion
4:00 Wilson Geisler
Sponsored by the David Wechsler Endowment and the Center for Perceptual Systems, University of Texas at Austin