Profile of Peter H. Schiller

摘要

In a windowless laboratory on the sixth floor of the Brain and Cognitive Sciences Institute of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), neu-roscientist Peter Schiller lines up visual stimuli on a computer screen. The stimuli are pairs of cues flashed side-by-side, such as horizontal and vertical lines, upright and inverted triangles, and the words "car" and "his." As Schiller flashes the stimuli on his monitor, a volunteer observes them through a stereoscope, which presents one cue in a pair to one eye and the other cue to the other eye. The volunteer identifies the stimuli in order: a cross, the Star of David, and the word "chairs." Then, the stereoscope displays groups of dots, some of which are shifted in position. To the volunteer, the shifting dots appear deeper than the rest. Through such experiments aimed at identifying people's ability to combine visual cues and perceive depth, Schiller, who was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2007, hopes to determine the brain regions involved in binocular integration and depth perception. The findings from those studies could help pinpoint the precise time frame when corrective interventions can best help stereoblind people perceive depth.