Paul Sajda

Those two tasks—rapid decision making and identifying subjective interests—are, however, exactly what Sajda and his team are succeeding in building. At the same time, Sajda is attempting to reveal the most basic neural structures in the brain that process visual information. In his Laboratory for Intelligent Imaging and Neural Computing, Sajda connects subjects to an EEG and flashes a series of images on a computer screen to record the neurological equivalent of the “Aha!” moment signaling interest or recognition. Once the “cortically coupled computer vision system” is calibrated to recognize the things that interest an individual, it can present more images that are likely to pique that person’s interest.

His work has drawn the attention of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency for its potential to help conduct a sort of visual triage by sifting quickly through petabytes (that’s a million gigabytes) of satellite imagery or hours of surveillance tapes. He also works with researchers at Columbia University Medical Center on techniques that enhance the brain’s ability to make quick decisions. But the question that most fascinates Sajda is what his studies of the brain’s visual recognition networks can do to reveal the organ’s fundamental ability to process massive amounts of information.