Dr. Charles Zuker

My pleasure.

The world is made of real things.

You know, this here is a glass.

And this is a cord and this is a microphone.

But the brain is only made of neurons that only understand electrical signals.

So how do you transform that reality into nothing that electrical signals that now need to represent the world?

And that process is what we can operationally define as perception.

In the senses, let's say olfactory, odor, taste, vision, we can very straightforwardly separate detection from perception.

Detection is what happens when you take a sugar molecule, you put it in your tongue, and then a set of specific cells now sense that sugar molecule.

That's detection.

You haven't perceived anything yet.

That is just your cells in your tongue interacting with this chemical.

But now that cell gets activated and sends a signal to the brain.

And now detection gets transformed into perception.

And he's trying to understand how that happens.

That's been the maniacal drive, right?

of my entire career in neuroscience.

How does the brain ultimately transform detection into perception so that it can guide actions and behaviors?

So if I want to begin to explore all of these things that the brain does, I felt I have to choose a sensory system that affords some degree of simplicity in the way that the input

output relationships are put together.