2024 Boynton Lecture

2024 Boynton Lecture: Saturday, Oct 5, 17:00

Michael Webster, University of Nevada at Reno

Adaptation and visual experience

Processes of adaptation continuously regulate the responses characteristics of the visual system to match the ambient visual environment. These adjustments occur throughout the visual stream, and normalize neural coding both for properties of the observer and their environment. They thus profoundly affect the nature and content of visual awareness. I will illustrate how adaptation promotes shared perceptual experiences among observers despite optical and physiological differences, while leading to divergent percepts in observers immersed in different stimulus contexts. I will also explore the implications of adaptation for what the visual system can “know” about the world.

A professional headshot of UNR scientist Michael Webster smiling, wearing a blue collared shirt.

The Optica Fall Vision Meeting Planning Committee is pleased to announce that Michael Webster has been selected as the 2024 Boynton Lecturer.

Since the early 1980s, Mike's research has advanced our understanding of visual coding and, in particular, visual adaptation – the process by which the visual system constantly modifies its operation to account for changes in the environment. Mike has published extensively on this phenomenon as it applies across the visual system – from early color vision mechanisms through to higher-level percepts such as blur, face identity and even digital mammograms.

After a PhD from Berkeley and a postdoctoral fellowship at Cambridge, he joined the Psychology Department of the University of Nevada at Reno (UNR) in 1994 and has made UNR a major center for vision research using both psychophysical and neuroimaging methods of investigation. He is now a Professor at UNR where he is also Co-Director of the Graduate MS/PhD Neuroscience Program, Co-Director of the Undergraduate BS Neuroscience Program and Director of the Center for Integrative Neuroscience.

Mike has a long history of involvement with Optica (formerly OSA) and has served in many different  leadership positions within the organization. He has been involved with the Fall Vision Meeting since its inception in 2001 and organized the 2018 meeting in UNR. He became an OSA Fellow in 2000 and was awarded the Verriest Medal by the International Color Vision Society in 2019.