He Lab
Principal Investigator: Biyu Jade He
Institution: New York University (New York, NY)
Primary Subfield: Neuroscience
Recruitment Status: ✅ Hiring Postdocs
Research Focus
PROJECT SUMMARY Visual object recognition is a critical function of the human brain, efficiently segmenting visual information into coherent objects, each with its own semantic meaning and behavioral relevance. Foundational work in visual neuroscience uncovered how feedforward processing in the ventral visual stream contributes to visual object recognition. In this project, we investigate several critical ingredients outside this standard framework which contribute to visual object recognition, whose roles and mechanisms remain poorly understood. These include pre-existing brain states, comprising spontaneous ongoing brain activity (Aim 1) and synaptic connectivity encoding memories from past experiences (Aim 2), as well as extra-ventral-stream mechanisms which we hypothesize to contribute to the strong reliance on the global shape cue in human object perception (Aim 3). Our long-term goal is to build a comprehensive framework for conscious object recognition in humans. Our central hypothesis is that object recognition results from the interaction between bottom-up sensory input and pre-existing brain states—including both active dynamics and memories encoded in synapses—and levera…
Active NIH Awards
- 2R01EY032085-06: Neural Mechanisms of Conscious Object Recognition in Humans (2026)
- 1R01NS148898-01: Neural Mechanisms of Visual Hallucinations in Lewy Body Diseases (2026)
- 5R01EY032085-05: Establishing a Unified Framework of Spontaneous Brain Activity in Perception (2025)
- 5R01EY032085-04: Establishing a Unified Framework of Spontaneous Brain Activity in Perception (2024)
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