How does the brain construct a rich and stable visual world from ambiguous, ever-changing sensory input. How do we segment, select, discard, and compress information? How do prior experience, knowledge, and biases shape perception, and what determines the limits of what we can consciously experience?

In the lab, we study phenomena such as redundancy masking, a form of neural information compression in which conscious access to information is limited. We develop appearance-based methods that capture visual experience beyond simple categories, and, in collaboration with artists, we study and create complex visual stimuli to study the scope of human perception.

Our research aims to better understand how perceptual and cognitive processes interact, shaping thinking, reasoning, and behavior, and ultimately the nature of conscious experience.