Belcourt Theatre Nashville, TN
Dr. Randolph Blake
Centennial Professor of Psychology, Vanderbilt University; Fellow of the Kennedy Center for Research in Human Development; Member of the Vanderbilt Vision Research Center and the Vanderbilt Center for Cognitive and Integrative Neuroscience
Brainstorm— Visual Cognition and Auditory-Visual Interaction
Program Description
Dr. Randolph Blake discussed visual cognition and auditory-visual interaction.
Presented At
Belcourt Theatre Nashville, TN
Film Synopsis
A neuroscientist creates a device that can record people's thoughts as visual images and soon finds himself in trouble with his superiors and a group of shadowy government figures.
Brilliant researchers Lillian Reynolds (Louise Fletcher) and Michael Brace (Christopher Walken) grapple with the double-edged potential of their newly invented virtual reality device, which records and reconstructs the sensory and emotional experiences of its operator. When Brace decides to use the device to study the brainwaves of his late wife (Natalie Wood), he finds himself at odds with his superiors and the United States government.
About the Speaker
Dr. Randolph Blake is Centennial Professor of Psychology, a Fellow of the Kennedy Center for Research in Human Development, and a member of the Vanderbilt Vision Research Center and the Vanderbilt Center for Cognitive and Integrative Neuroscience. He also holds a joint appointment in the newly formed Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at Seoul National University. He was awarded a PhD by Vanderbilt University in 1972, with a dissertation on binocular vision. He was a NIMH Postdoctoral Fellow at Baylor College of Medicine/University of Texas Health Sciences Center, where he received training in neuroanatomy and neurophysiology. Blake was a faculty member at Northwestern University from 1974 to 1988, where he studied human and animal vision, with an emphasis on spatial vision and motion perception.
He moved to Vanderbilt in 1988, where he was chair of the Department of Psychology for eight years. His research interests expanded to include binocular vision and perceptual organization, visual cognition, and auditory/visual interactions.
Dr. Blake is a Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a Fellow of the American Psychological Association. He has held the William Evans Chair at Otago University and received the Early Career Award (American Psychological Association) and a Career Development Award (NIH). In 2000, he received the Earl Sutherland Prize, in 2006 was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, in 2008 won the Thomas Jefferson Award, and in 2012 was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. In 2006, Dr. Blake received an IgNobel Prize for his research on the psychoacoustics of a chilling sound.