Jun 082012
How does experience change the functional specialization of the higher visual cortex? We are studying the behavioral and neural changes that take place when people acquire experience reading music. So far, we have found this kind of expertise to be qualitatively different from what has been obtained for “face-like” expertise (being good at individuating visually similar objects) or expertise with letters. Studying this and other kinds of experts allow us to develop a more general framework to explain perceptual expertise, one that can deal with learning all sorts of different skills.
This work is supported in part by NSF grant #SBE 0542013 to the Temporal Dynamics of Learning Center, an NSF Science of Learning Center.