Professor of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences Michael Tarr has been awarded one of the first of several new grants given by the National Institutes of Health for his innovative approach to answering a tough question: How do our eyes process information?
The so-called "EUREKA" grant, which recognizes "Exceptional, Unconventional Research Enabling Knowledge Acceleration," is one of 38 such awards worth a total of $42.2 million, according to a Sept. 3 NIH press release. Selected researchers will receive approximately $200,000 per year for up to four years.
Tarr said he will use the grant money to look at "how the eye understands and interprets the world." There is a good deal of knowledge about the beginning and end stages of how the brain processes visual data, he said, but not about the intermediate stages of that process. For example, how does the eye remember and recognize different objects?
"The biggest problem," Tarr said, "is (that) we have not learned a lot of concrete facts about high-level vision."
Tarr will use functional magnetic resonance imaging, a specialized kind of MRI scan, for his research. Unlike many fMRI studies, which involve recording responses and analyzing them later, Tarr will be able to assess them in real time. This real-time element "re-casts" the way research is usually done, he said.
Last year, Tarr was one of five Brown professors to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship.
At least one undergraduate will assist Tarr in his upcoming research.
Tarr is co-director of the Center for Vision Research, "a world class facility," he said, that opened its doors in July. The center brings together 30 faculty members from 10 different academic departments to investigate how humans learn and process objects visually.
