From the Mind’s Eye to the Naked Eye

About This Project

Progress in the analysis of brain and behavior is providing the opportunity to visualize the pictorial content of someone’s personal experience. For instance, by analyzing brain and/or behavioral data associated with a visual experience (e.g., looking at someone’s face or remembering it) we can reconstruct the visual appearance experienced by a certain individual. Theoretically, this provides an unprecedented glimpse into the nature of our subjective experiences and of their neural underpinnings (i.e., how our minds ‘see’ the world). Practically, this work sets the ground for specific forensic and clinical applications (e.g., communicating with patients incapable or impaired in their ability to interact through other means).

Dr. Nestor completed his doctoral work on the neural and computational basis of face recognition (Brown University; PhD in Cognitive Science, 2009). After completing his PhD, he joined the Department of Psychology and the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in 2009 as a postdoctoral fellow. In this position, he investigated the neurocomputational basis of face and visual word recognition. Subsequently, he made the transition to research independence as a research scientist with the Department of Psychology at CMU in 2012. Dr. Nestor’s research program is uncovering the neurocomputational basis of visual recognition through the use of advanced neuroimaging methods, through computational modeling, and through neuropsychological investigations in patients with visual deficits.