Conference Report: 14th Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society 2014

In May 2014 Apoorva Rajiv Madipakkam had the opportunity to visit Florida and the annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society.

In the second week of May, vision scientists from around the world came together in Florida, for what is probably one of the largest vision science conferences: the Vision Sciences Society (VSS). 
With every possible topic concerning visual perception, from attention and face perception to computational modeling and eye movements, the conference was filled with the presentation of exciting ideas and data. Workshops that included discussions on the most controversial topic in science – journal publications and impact factors – made the conference even more lively.
Apart from the daytime sessions, the evenings were also filled with interesting events like the Illusion Of The Year contest. The dynamic Ebbinghaus illusion bagged the prize for this year. The classical Ebbinghaus illusion is the apparent change in size of a central circle, depending on the context in which it is presented. That is, the central circle appears bigger when surrounded by smaller circles and smaller when surrounded by bigger circles although the actual size remains the same. The classical illusion has a new twist to it which can be checked out here: http://bit.ly/1s6cpki

Beuchet Chair, source: http://viperlibnew.york.ac.uk/

A report of this conference would, of course, not be complete without the Demo Night, where one could be a part of several visual illusions and phenomena. For example, there was a demonstration of the famous Beuchet chair. Here, the two separate parts of the chair seem to belong together even though they are at different distances. However, they have the appropriate sizes to create a single image on the retina at an intermediate distance. The Demo Night felt a bit like Disneyland for scientists... it was magical, exciting, and required standing in a queue to take part in the demonstration. It definitely felt like the organizers had the perfect recipe for the balance between work and fun! The deadline for submission of abstracts for next year's VSS is the middle of December. For more information: www.visionsciences.org

by Apoorva Rajiv Madipakkam, Alumni AG Sterzer

this article originally appeared 2014 in CNS Volume 7, Issue 3, Nature vs Nurture