BCSC 220: Syllabus
Fall 2025
Personnel
Instructor: Michele Rucci
Co-Instructors: Jie Wang and Ruitao Lin
Course Description
Aristotle once described visual perception as “to know what is where by looking.” This intuitive definition reflects the apparent effortlessness of seeing, yet such simplicity is itself an illusion. While computers have reached grandmaster level in chess, they still struggle with basic visual tasks that young children solve effortlessly every moment of their waking lives.
This course offers an interdisciplinary exploration of how the human brain addresses the complex problems of sensory perception. Topics will include the nature of light in the environment, the physical properties of the eye, and the structure and function of the visual nervous system. We will examine how humans and other animals perceive the three-dimensional structure of the world, recognize objects, and use visual information to guide action. Clinical aspects of vision will also be discussed, including optical correction, visual disorders, and the consequences of brain injury, as well as perceptual processes that are shared across sensory systems.
The central theme of this year’s course is active vision: the ways in which the observer’s own behavior shapes and facilitates visual processing, enabling the formation of stable and useful visual representations. This theme will serve as a framework for investigating both normal visual function and perceptual impairments.
Students will engage with both classical and contemporary research articles, including seminal studies that have challenged intuitive notions and reshaped our understanding of vision and sensory perception. Through lectures, readings, and seminar discussions, students will encounter the central questions, experimental approaches, and ongoing debates that define contemporary perceptual science.
Goals
This course reviews efforts to understand visual perception within the broader context of the interdisciplinary brain sciences. To achieve this, it will include the following components:
- Hands-on demonstrations of perceptual phenomena. Students will engage in practical exercises designed to illustrate striking aspects of visual perception, providing immediate personal experience with the concepts under discussion.
- Presentation of key findings in visual neuroscience. The course will survey major advances in vision science over the past three decades. This includes the anatomical organization of the visual system, the physiological properties of the neurons that compose it, and the perceptual functions these neural mechanisms may serve. This material will introduce students to one of the most intensively investigated areas of systems neuroscience.
- Introduction to analytic tools in perceptual science. Students will learn about the methods researchers use to study visual perception, including how measurements are made and how scientific hypotheses are rigorously tested. Examples will illustrate how these tools are applied at multiple levels: from recording the activity of individual neurons, to analyzing behavior in experimental animals, to assessing perceptual functions in clinical patients with brain injury. Emphasis will be placed on how carefully designed experiments with human observers can reveal surprisingly specific properties of the nervous system.
Course Organization
The course will combine lectures, seminars, and in-class demonstrations. Its primary aim is to foster critical engagement with contemporary research in vision science. Many meetings will therefore focus on discussions of research papers, with particular attention to recent review articles that highlight current advances and debates in the field.
Because a certain level of background knowledge is necessary for these discussions, lectures based on selected textbook readings will be interspersed throughout the course. These lectures will provide the necessary foundation and ensure that all students are prepared to participate fully in class discussions.
The study of perception offers a distinctive opportunity to integrate scientific reasoning with personal experience. Many perceptual phenomena can be observed directly and appreciated without specialized equipment. To make use of this, we will conduct simple in-class experiments designed to generate shared first-hand observations. These activities will enable students to take on the role of the scientist, drawing meaning from their own observations, evaluating alternative interpretations, and connecting their insights with the material presented in lectures and readings.
Participation
The success of this course depends directly on active student involvement. Meaningful participation in class discussions is therefore essential. To contribute effectively, students are expected to arrive prepared, having carefully completed all assigned readings and written work in advance.
In addition, students will meet in study groups at least once per week. These meetings will serve to coordinate paper presentations, review assigned materials, and ensure that all members are ready to engage productively in class discussions.
Course Schedule
Classes will meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays 11:05 am -12:20 pm in LeChase Hall 103. This is an in-person course.
In accordance with the academic calendar, there will be no class on October 14 and November 27 (Thanksgiving). The last class will be held on Thursday, December 4.
This course follows the College credit hour policy for four-credit courses. This course meets two times weekly and includes independent out-of-class assignments for an average of one academic hour per week. In this course, students will complete the group activities using readings and other class materials. These activities include review of the materials discussed in previous lectures and analysis of the paper assigned for next lecture.
Textbook, Readings, and Lecture Notes
Reading for the course will include book chapters and research articles from the vision literature. Copies of reading material will be posted on the course blackboard site.
Reference textbook: A useful (but not required) resource is the book “Sensation and Perception” by Jeremy Wolfe et al., Sinauer Associates. This book provides a simple introduction to relevant themes and the associated technical vocabulary without imposing complex technical descriptions. It gives excellent introductory overviews of the fields of sensory perception and brain physiology.
More advanced textbook: For those who want to gain further information, the book “Vision Science: Photons to Phenomenology” by Stephen E. Palmer contains more detailed treatments of several of the topics that will be covered. We will sometimes use examples from this book.
Assignments & Evaluation
In this course, all students will be required to take a mid-term exam, give scientific presentations, participate in the class discussion, and take a final exam. Attendance is mandatory for this course.
Mid-term exam: The mid-term exam consists a set of multiple-choice questions (70 quizzes). It will be taken during the regular class time of October 16th.
Scientific Presentations: Each week we will review one or two articles from the scientific literature. For each article, a slide presentation will give an overview of the materials (approximately 30–40 minutes) followed by a group discussion led by the student presenters.
Each week, a small group of students will be responsible for introducing the article and guiding the discussion. Every student will present for approximately 15 minutes.
Presenters are expected to coordinate in their group meetings prior to class, prepare clear and well-formatted slides, and send a PDF copy of their presentation before class. The presentation should follow the structure of the article, going from one figure or set of results to the next.
The presenters and the instructor will lead a group discussion on the study’s findings and the new questions it raises. Grades will be based on both the quality of the presentation and active engagement in the discussion. Students are reminded that in vision science there are no “trivial” questions, and all contributions are valued. You should not feel shy about expressing your ideas.
Presenters are encouraged to meet with the instructor in advance, either to clarify issues that arise during group preparation or to receive feedback on their slides. Graduate students enrolled in the course are expected to provide deeper analysis in both their presentations and their contributions to discussion.
Final Exam: The final assessment will take the form of either a presentation or a written paper on a visual illusion and the research addressing its possible explanations.
Final Presentation: 15 minutes (including 3 minutes for questions), describing the phenomenon and explaining at least one proposed mechanism underlying it.
Final Paper: A clearly written, well-organized essay (maximum 6 pages, 11-point font). Papers must be submitted as a PDF by email to the instructor.
Both formats must cite at least five scholarly references.
Grades will be based on the mid-term (25%), the quality of the scientific presentation during the course (25%), your participation in the class discussions (25%) and the final exam (25%).