講座內(nèi)容：Perceptuallearning refers to remarkable performance improvement after intensive training.It is a popular model for studying cortical plasticity. So far, we still do notknow much about the neural mechanisms of visual perceptual learning. There is adebate between early-stage theories and late-stage theories. Early-stagetheories argue that perceptual learning sharpens the tuning properties of earlyvisual neurons. Late-stage theories argue that perceptual learning reweightsthe outputs of visual channels for optimal decision making. In my lab, wecombined psychophysics, magnetic resonance imaging, and transcranical magneticstimulation to investigate the neural mechanisms of face and motiondiscrimination learning. We show that: 1) perceptual learning reduces internalneural noise and sharpens cortical tuning to trained stimuli in sensory codingareas; 2) perceptual learning modifies the connections between sensory andhigher areas for optimal decision-making; 3) The anatomical structure ofsensory cortex could predict the effect of perceptual training; 4) The effectsof perceptual learning extend beyond the retuning of specific neuralpopulations that mediate performance of the trained task. Learning could modifythe inherent functional specializations of visual cortical areas.