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Huang Pi-Chun (Bee)

Pi-Chun Huang 

 e-mail: pi_chun2001@yahoo.com.tw

Education

  • 09/2004-10/2007
    PhD.  McGill Vision Research Unit, Division of Neuroscience, Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery,McGill University.
  • 09/2002-06/2004
    Master. McGill Vision Research Unit, Division of Neuroscience,Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery,McGill University.
  • 09/1998 - 01/2001
    M.S. National Chung-Cheng University, Institute of Psychology. 
  • 09/1994 - 06/1998
    B.S. National Chung-Cheng University, Psychology Department.

Acdemic Positions

  • 01/2008-present
    postdoctoral fellow.  Psychology department, National Taiwan Unversity.
  • 03/2002-07/2002
    Full-time Research Assistant.  Institute of Applied Arts, National Chiao-Tung University.
  • 04/2001 - 02/2002
    Full-time Research Assistant.  Department of medical research and education,Veterans General Hospital in Taipei.

Research

My research interests focus on the basic visual processings. I'd like to combine the psychophysical studies, computer simulation and brain imaging to well-understand how human visual system works.

Interests

  • Spatial Vision
    My PhD thesis focuses on how collinear facilitation (i.e., the phenomenon that nearby or flanking stimuli can reduce the detection threshold of a target stimulus) helps to integrate segmented visual information into a global percept. This project includes a number of issues in collinear facilitation to better our understanding of its neural basis: 1) Cortical sites of collinear facilitatoin, 2) Collinear facilitation in color vision and its interactions between luminance and chromatic system, 3) Collinear facilitation in 2nd order stimuli, 4) the dynamics of collinear facilitation.
    I am currently focusing on other similar contextual effect, namely the interactions between target and different types of surround stimuli (e.g. annulus surround) at near threshold or suprathreshold level.

    • Huang, P. C. and R. F. Hess (2008). " The Dynamics of Collinear Facilitation: fast but sustained." Submitted to Vision Research.
    • Huang, P. C. and R. F. Hess (2007). "Collinear facilitation: Effect of additive and multiplicative external noise." Vision Res 47(24): 3108-3119.
    • Huang, P.C., Mullen, K.T. & Hess, R. F. (2007). Collinear facilitation in color vision.Journal of Vision, 7(11):6, 1-14.[Article Link]
    • Huang, P.C., Hess, R.F. & Dakin, S.D. (2006). Flank facilitationn and contour integration: different sites. Vision Research, 46(21):3699-3706.

  • Phase Encoding
    Visual input coming from the retina is decomposed by cells in V1 that are tuned to different spatial frequency, orientation and phase. A number of studies have argued for a phase model involving detectors tuned to two or more of four channels. The project I have done is to investigate whether there exist detectors of four cardinal phases in human vision (see Huang, Kingdom & Hess, 2006 for details). The next step I would love to do is to investigate how phases integrates from different spatial scales (e.g. spatial frequency). It has been shown that power spectrum is important for identifying the texture, and phase spectrum is important for identifying the objects. By using complex stimuli it would help to answer the questions.

    • Huang, P.C., Kingdom, F. A. A. & Hess, R. F. (2006). Only two phase mechanisms, ±cosine, in human vision. Vision Research, 46(13):2069-2081.

  • Second-Order Edge Detection
    This is my master's project that focuses on the texture-defined edge. Boundary is defined as the area that surface changes quickly. To form an edge representation, two processes are involved: 1) count the number of features that the filters responded. 2) calculate the feature gradient from the first step input, and define the peak as an edge. The project was to investigate the second stage mechanism of edge defined by texture.

  • Symmetry Perception
    This is the on-going project that I work with Prof. Chen as a post doctoral reserach fellow. Symmetric objects can be found everywhere in our daily life and they can be detected effortlessly and rapidly. Therefore it is no surprise to assume that the human visual system evolve adaptive strategies to detect symmetry. There have been lots of research focusing this issue. However, there is still no conclusive answer how visual system extracts and represents symmetry in human vision system. This project tried to answer it by using psychophysics, fMRI methods.

Journal Article

  • Huang, P. C. and R. F. Hess (2008). " The Dynamics of Collinear Facilitation: fast but sustained." Submitted to Vision Research.
  • Huang, P. C. and R. F. Hess (2007). "Collinear facilitation: Effect of additive and multiplicative external noise." Vision Res 47(24): 3108-3119.
  • Huang, P. C., K. T. Mullen and R. F. Hess (2007). "Collinear facilitation in color vision." J Vis 7(11): 6 1-14.
  • Huang, P. C., R. F. Hess and S. C. Dakin (2006). "Flank facilitation and contour integration: different sites." Vision Res 46(21): 3699-3706.
  • Huang, P. C., F. A. Kingdom and R. F. Hess (2006). "Only two phase mechanisms, +/-cosine, in human vision." Vision Res 46(13): 2069-2081.

Conference Abstract

  • Huang, P. C. , & Hess, R. F. (2008). Dynamics of Collinear facilitation: fast yet sustained. Vision Sciences Society 8th Annual Meeting (submitted).
  • Huang,P.C., & Hess, R. F. (2007). Collinear facilitation: effects of additive and multiplicative visual noise. [Abstract] Journal of Vision, 7 (9) 250a.
  • Huang, P.C., Mullen, K. T., & Hess, R. F. (2006). Flank Facilitation for Isoluminant Chromatic Stimuli. [Abstract] Journal of Vision, 6(6) 229a.
  • Huang, P.C., Hess, R. F., & Kingdom, F. A. A. (2005). Labelled lines for phase? [Abstract] Journal of Vision, 5(8), 185a.
  • Huang, P.C., Hess, R. F., & Dakin, S. C. (2004). Different sites for lateral facilitation and contour integration. [Abstract] Journal of Vision, 4(8), 781a.
  • Huang, P.C., Chen, I., & Lee, I.P. (2001). Multiple spatial-frequency channels for the detection of orientation modulation patterns. [Abstract] Perception, ECVP01 Suppl.
  • Chen, I., and Huang, P.C. (2001). Gamma correction by psychophysical method. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Chinese Psychology Association, Taipei, Taiwan.
  • Huang, P.C., and Chen, I. (2000). Multiple channels for 2nd-order edge detection. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Chinese Psychology Association, Taipei, Taiwan.
  • Huang, P.C., & Chen, I. (1999). The mechanism of 2nd-order edge detection. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Chinese Psychology Association, Taipei, Taiwan.

Thesis

  • Huang, P.C. (2001). The filtering properties of 2nd-order texture mechanism. Master's thesis. Supervisor: Dr. I-Ping Chen
  • Huang,P.C. (2007). The properties of collinear facilitation in human vision. PhD thesis. Supervisor: Dr. Robert F. Hess

Non-Acdemic Link

Pi-Chun Huang's Blog