Whenever we look at something, our brain doesn’t just rely on the signals coming from our eyes. It also combines those signals with what we already know, what we expect to see, and what we’re paying attention to at that moment. The aim of the KnowledgeBased Vision Lab is to understand how this complex process works in the human brain.

To study this, we use brain imaging techniques such as fMRI and EEG, along with carefully designed experiments. These tools allow us to test how expectation and attention influence vision. For example, we investigate whether they:

1. Help the brain encode visual information more efficiently
2. Change the timing of how visual information is processed
3. Improve the way information flows between different brain areas

At the UKSH, our lab is expanding this research to explore the idea of “perceptual fingerprints.” This refers to the unique way each person’s brain processes visual information. We want to find out whether these fingerprints can be used to detect psychological conditions such as ADHD and autism.

In addition, we aim to use insights from brain imaging to build more human-like AI systems. By designing layers in these networks that process visual information in a way similar to the human brain, we hope to create AI agents that see and interpret the world more naturally.