Gerardo (Jerry) Viera

Jerry’s research lies at the intersection between philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, and related fields. The main focus of his research concerns temporal perception and cognition. He has several ongoing research projects that intersect in various ways:

• Time: Unity and the Self: We gather information about time through multiple sensory systems, yet the world strikes us as containing a single unified and coherent temporal ordering of events - a single unified timeline. How is this possible? This project involves investigating how temporal information is integrated across the various timekeeping mechanisms used in perception and how this relates to our sense of the self.
   
• Foundations of Cognitive (Neuro)Science: Two foundational claims in the sciences of the mind/brain are that (i) minds/brains represent the world; (ii) they do so by having different parts that work together. Jerry’s research investigates how (i) is possible by using the formalisms provided by information theory and game theory. Jerry’s research also investigates how we understand claims about (ii) when the different areas of the cognitive science disagree as to how the mind is structured.
   
• Perception: From Probabilistic Processing to Consciousness
  
  Project #1 (with Lara Krisst, Jennifer Laura Lee, and Trey Boone): Funded by the Templeton World Charity Fund, through a sub-grant awarded to the Summer Seminars in Neuroscience and Philosophy, this project investigates the nature of representations in early visual processes (e.g., iconic memory and visual short-term memory) to better understand competing theories of consciousness. The project combines philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience.
  
  Project #2 (with Raphael Gerraty, Jessica Thompson, and Samuel Lippl): Funded by the Templeton World Charity Fund, through a sub-grant awarded to the Summer Seminars in Neuroscience and Philosophy, this project investigates whether or not early visual processes make use of probabilistic representations. The project combines philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, and computational modelling.