David Brainard

RRL Professor of Psychology
Associate Dean for the Natural Sciences
BS, Physics, Harvard University;
Ph.D., Psychology, Stanford University
Office Location: 
417, Goddard Labs, 3710 Hamilton Walk, Philadelphia PA, 19104
Email: 
brainard@psych.upenn.edu
Phone: 
215-573-7579
Website: 
http://color.psych.upenn.edu/
CV (url): 
http://color.psych.upenn.edu/brainard/BrainardCV.pdf
Research Interests: 
Behavioral Neuroscience
Cognitive Neuroscience
Sensation and Perception
 
Specific Research Areas:

Human vision, visual neuroscience, and computational modeling of visual processing

The Brainard Lab studies human vision, both experimentally and through computational modeling of visual processing. Our primary concern is with how the visual system estimates object properties from the information available in the light signal incident at the eye. To study this general problem, we conduct psychophysical experiments to investigate questions such as how object color appearance is related to object surface properties under a wide range of illumination conditions and how color is used to identify objects, and formulate computational models of the results. In addition, we are interested in developing machine visual systems that can mimic human performance and in understanding the neural mechanisms of vision. 
 
Professor David Brainard will not be considering new graduate students for admission for Fall 2023.
 
Selected Publications: 

Godat, T., Cottaris, N. P., Patterson, S., Kohout, K., Parkins, K., Yang, Q., Strazzeri, J. M., McGregor, J. E., Brainard, D. H., Merigan, W. H., Williams, D. R. (2022). In vivo physiology of foveal retinal ganglion cells in Macaca fascicularis. PLoS One, 17(11), e0278261, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278261.

Singh, V., Burge, J., Brainard, D. H. (2022). Equivalent noise characterization of human lightness constancy. Journal of Vision, 22(5):2, doi: https://doi.org/10.1167/jov.22.5.2. 

Zhang, L., Cottaris, N. P., Brainard, D. H. (2022). An image reconstruction framework for characterizing early vision. eLife, 2022;11:e71132, https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.71132.

Barnett, M. A., Aguirre, G. K., Brainard, D. H. (2021). A quadratic model captures the human V1 response to variations in chromatic direction and contrast, eLife, 2021;10:e65590, https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.65590.

Cooper, R. F., Brainard, D. H., Morgan, J. I. W. (2020). Optoretinography of individual human cone photoreceptors. Optics Express, 28, 39326-39339, https://www.osapublishing.org/oe/fulltext.cfm?uri=oe-28-26-39326&id=444748.

McAdams, H., Kaiser, E. A., Igdalova, A., Haggerty, E. B.., Cucchiara, B., Brainard, D. H., Aguirre, G. K. (2020). Selective amplification of ipRGC signals accounts for interictal photophobia in migraine, PNAS, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2007402117.  Download PDF.

Cottaris, N. P., Wandell, B. A., Reike, F., Brainard, D. H. (2020). A computational observer model of spatial contrast sensitivity: Effects of photocurrent encoding, fixational eye movements, and inference engine. Journal of Vision, 20(7):17, https://doi.org/10.1167/jov.20.7.17.

Tuten, W. S., Cooper, R. F., Tiruveedhula, P., Dubra, A., Roorda, A., Cottaris, N. P., Brainard, D. H., Morgan, J. I. W. (2018). Spatial summation in the human fovea: do normal optical aberrations and fixational eye movements have an effect? Journal of Vision, 18(8):6, doi: 10.1167/18.8.6, https://jov.arvojournals.org/article.aspx?articleid=2697364.

 

Courses Taught: 
COGS 001 Introduction to Cognitive Science
BIBB 217 Visual Neuroscience
PSYC 719 Experimental Methods in Perception
 
Advisees:
Semin Oh [Postdoc]
Lingqi Zhang [Postdoc]
Raymond Warner [Postdoc]