Applied Maths Seminar: Ermentrout -- Double or Nothing: The Blinking Brain

Speaker: Prof. Bard Ermentrout, University of Pittsburgh ( http://www.pitt.edu/~phase/ )

Room: Carslaw 173 (update), 2-3pm

Abstract:
In this talk, I discuss two kinds of visual phenomena that are produced by
periodically forcing the visual system. In both cases, spatiotemporal
patterns are generated by nonlinear interactions of the stimulus with the
underlying dynamics of the visual system. Period doubling bifurcations
lead to slowly modulated bistability in one case and spontaneous symmetry
breaking in the other. The talk will be accessible to graduate students.