Vision: A Platform for Linking Circuits, Behavior & Perception
June 15 - July 1, 2027
Key Dates
Application Deadline: March 17, 2027
Arrival: June 15th by 6pm EST
Departure: July 1st around 12pm EST
The course will be held at the Laboratory's Banbury Conference Center located on the north shore of Long Island. CSHL Courses are intensive, running all day and often including evenings and weekends; students are expected to attend all sessions and reside on campus for the duration of the course.
Instructors:
Joseph Carroll, Medical College of Wisconsin Eye Institute
Kristina Nielsen, Johns Hopkins University
The purpose of this course is to bring together students and faculty for in-depth and high level discussions of modern approaches for probing how specific cell types and circuits give rise to defined categories of visual perception and behavior. It is also designed to address novel strategies aimed at overcoming diseases that compromise visual function.
The visual system is the most widely studied sensory modality. In recent years, emerging technological advances have encouraged exploration of visual function across a wider array of model systems using diverse experimental approaches. For example, the tractability of genetic manipulation and imaging in mice has led to an increase in the use of the mouse as a model system for exploring how specific cells and circuits underlie visual and multi-sensory processing and cognition. Additionally, advances in genetic and viral methods have enabled similar cell- and circuit-centric explorations of visual function in a variety of model systems including insectivores, carnivores, and primates. Finally, the field of visual neuroscience is at the forefront of technological and therapeutic advances in clinical/translational work to restore visual function in humans.
The time is ripe to build on the classic paradigms and discoveries of visual system structure, function and disease, in order to achieve a deep, mechanistic understanding of how neuronal populations encode sensory information, how different circuits can induce defined categories of percepts and behaviors, and how modulations of cells and circuits may restore visual function in the diseased brain.
Prior year Invited Speakers
Marisa Carrasco-Queijeiro, New York University, New York, NY
David Brainard, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA
Farran Briggs, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY
Connie Cepko, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA
Felice Dunn, UCSF, San Francisco, CA
Chris Fetsch, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD
Jonathan Horton, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA
Krystel Huxlin, University of Rochester Medical Center, Rochester, NY CA
Elizabeth Johnson, The University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA
Sabine Kastner, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ
Maureen McCall, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY
Tony Movshon, New York University, New York, NY
Anitha Pasupathy, University of Washington, Seattle, WA
Sara Patterson, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY
Carlos Ponce, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
Nick Priebe, University of Texas, TX
Jenny Read, Newcastle University, Newcastle Upon Tyne
Austin Roorda, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA
Ari Rosenberg, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI
Elise Savier, University of Michigan, MI
Miranda Scalabrino, The Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Gordon Smith, University of Minnesota, MN
Marc Sommer, Duke University, Durham, NC
W. Marty Usrey, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA
2027 Course Schedule:
- June 15: Students arrive (late afternoon)
- June 16: Visual System Overview
- June 17: Optics and visual psychophysics
- June 18: Retinal computations
- June 19: LGN & V1
- June 20: Career Development
- June 21: VisualSystem Development
- June 22: Pulvinar
- June 23: Vision Disorders
- June 24: Color vision
- June 25: Dorsal Stream
- June 26: Day Off
- June 27: Ventral Stream
- June 28: Eye Movements &3D Vision
- June 29: Attention &Decision Making
- June 30: Group Project Presentations
- July 1: Departure
*schedule is subject to change
All participants stay within walking distance of the Center, close to tennis court, pool and private beach.
Support & Stipends:
Major support may be provided by the National Eye Institute of the National Institutes of Health.
Additional support provided by Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and Fighting Blindness Foundation.
Stipends are available to offset tuition costs as follows:
Please indicate your eligibility for funding in your stipend request submitted when you apply to the course. Stipend requests do not affect selection decisions made by the instructors.