Theses and Dissertations at Montana State University (MSU)
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Item Reaction time to visual targets as a function of the proximity of a contour(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 1975) Murphy, Stephen CharlesItem Visual imagery and individual differences(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 1977) Chara, Paul JohnItem Exploration of cat striate cortex during natural scene stimulation(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2013) Baker, Jonathan Lee; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Charles M. GrayThe mammalian visual system evolved to process and represent objects within the complexities of the natural world to appropriately guide behavior in order to ensure survival and reproduction. Visual neuroscience has long sought to understand the neural basis of these processes, but the complexity of both the visual world and the brain has traditionally required a highly reductionist approach. The classical approach has led to the development of models of visual perception that are largely based on the analysis of how single cells within the visual system respond to simple and parametrically defined visual stimuli. However our ultimate goal is to understand how the visual system operates in the natural world. The experiments and results contained in this thesis were conducted, in part, to explore the cat's visual system during the presentation of time varying natural scenes, i.e. movies, and to attempt to validate our current working models of the visual system. Novel large-scale recording methods were employed to record from and characterize responses of large populations of cat primary visual cortex neurons during classical as well as movie stimulation. Contrary to the current models and our general understanding of how visual cortex represents information, groups of adjacent neurons responded heterogeneously to the movies presented and individual responses were very brief and highly sparse in time. The diversity and dynamics of the spiking activity was also significantly correlated with fluctuations of the ongoing local field potentials, specifically within the gamma frequency band, ranging from 25 to 90Hz. These gamma band oscillations also exhibited rich spatiotemporal dynamics throughout the movie presentations. In conclusion, time-varying natural scenes evoke response dynamics within the cat primary visual cortex not typically observed under more classical stimulus regimes. Future experimentation and the construction of biologically feasible models of visual cortex should take into account the diversity of responses observed under more natural stimulus conditions.Item Form follows feeling : a culturally-based approach to experiential design(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Arts & Architecture, 2012) Martinez, Samuel Paul; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Maire O'NeillThrough our training and expertise, architects become very visually-oriented in their approach to design. Having become subservient to sight, we have mostly forgotten how to design for other sensory experiences. If we ask our clients a specific line of qualitative questions, we might better understand how the spaces we create can perform from an experiential standpoint, thereby enabling us to create richer, deeper experiences of place. Furthermore, I propose that we can use the information garnered from this questioning to begin an architectural design by working from details at the micro scale and using them to drive the larger formal issues of our designs. My intent was to synthesize responses from interviews to determine significant qualities of space. These responses were then used to identify details of chief importance in engaging sensory experiences through the project design. These details were coalesced to formulate key experiences of the larger design, which allowed me to approach the grander gestures of the project as a whole. However, rather than focus on a fully-resolved design for the site and the building, my chief concern was focusing on the aforementioned details of the design in order to support the proposed methodology. The project focused on three key spaces that were often referred to in interviewees' responses: the gathering space, the outdoor areas, and the study rooms. At the conclusion, I found that it was in fact possible to start from the smallest microcosm of the building design, the human scale, and work outwards. This became a simultaneous exploration of scales (human, the scale of spaces, the building scale, and the site) through four facets: 1) tactility, 2) light, 3) flow, and 4) social interaction. I've found that focusing on these facets through the lens of interviewees' responses allows architects to create experiences of space centered around people and the human body. Key questions arose at the conclusion: At what point do you move beyond iterations to a resolved design? How does one quantify whether or not the design meets the experiential needs of the users? Answers to these questions necessitate deeper exploration still.