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Title
Dr. Department Institute of Ophthalmology Position Reader Research Area Developmental, Cellular, Systems, Cognitive, Computational Research Title Reader of Neuroscience |
Email
lotto@ucl.ac.uk Telephone 020 7608 4052 Internal Telephone n/a Fax 020 7608 4064 Address 11-43 Bath Street TQ9 7JU |
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Web Link
www.lottolab.org
Research Interests
Rationalising what, how and why we see what we do through research on humans, bees and virtual robots
Research Description
The fundamental challenge facing the evolution and development of any brain (natural or artificial) is to generate useful behaviour from sensory information that is behaviourally uncertain. Understanding the principles by which the brains of machines, bees and humans resolve this conundrum is fundamental to explaining how and why we perceive what we do – which is the raison d’etre of the research in my lab. The answer must reside in the dynamics between the history of behaviour the functional architecture of the brain and ecology. As such, we address the question of vision at multiple levels, form human psychophysics and fMRI to bee visual behavior and physiology to natural and virtual visual ecology to the evolution of complex Artificial-Life networks, which together encompass the questions of what we see, how we see it and why.
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In addition to our scientific research, a great deal of time is also spent communicating our findings and their more general significance through public works that explore – at a more intuitive level – the principles of the visual mind. Past public works include ‘White Light White Shadows’ at the Hayward Gallery South Bank, Sensual Geographies at the Otter Gallery in Chichester, the Nature of Illusion at the Bristol and Glasgow Science Museums, a six metre outdoor glass tower on Old Street in London; an installation of bees, glass and light for the ScienceGallery in Dublin; an experiment of light and colour for the Serpentine Gallery, London. etc.
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The point of all our work (both ‘scientific’ and otherwise) is to better understand and explore the notion that the mind is not an outside observer of nature defined by its essential properties, but is instead defined by its physical, social and cultural ecology.
Collaborators (Internal)
Adam Sillito,
Peter Bentley,
Bernard Buxton,
Steven Dakin,
Geraint Rees,
Tom Mrsic-Flogel,
Mark Lythgoe,
UCL Collections,
Collaborators (External)
Dale Purves,
Sophie Wuerger,
Laura Parks,
Lars Chittka,
Daniel Osorio,
Elena Alvarez-Buylla,
Marcus Miessen,
Olafur Eliasson,
Bronac Ferran,
Robert Zimmer,
Jason Brudges Studio,
Fosters Architects,
Studio Van der Graaf,
Enzo Creative Ineraction,
Shoreditch Trust,
Transport for London
Keywords
Behaviour, Brain imaging, Cognition, Computational modelling, Development, Electrophysiology, fMRI, Neural Circuits/Networks, Perception, Vision
Conditions
Blindness
Methods
Behavioural analysis, Computational modeling, Functional MRI (fMRI), Psychophysics, Neuroanatomical approaches