Summary
Mark Lescroart joined the Cognitive & Brain Sciences group in the department of psychology at the University of Nevada, Reno in the spring of 2018. He got his Ph.D. at the University of Southern California working with Irving Biederman and did postdoctoral research with Jack Gallant at UC Berkeley. He is originally from San Jose, California.
Research Interests
The goal of Dr. Lescroart's lab is to understand how our brains transform patterns of light on our retinas into useful information about the world. The lab is specifically interested how different areas in the brain provide information about the identity and shape of objects, the structure of space, and the types of actions (such as running, jumping, and throwing) performed by humans around us. Dr. Lescroart pursues these questions by making computational models of brain responses measured by fMRI. These models predict how the brain will respond to a wide variety of visual stimuli. Models developed by the lab can also be used to decode the image or movie clip that elicited a given visual response in the brain.
Courses Taught
- Measuring the human brain (PSY 413)
Education
- Ph.D. in Neuroscience, University of Southern California, 2011
- B.S. in Psychobiology, University of Southern California, 2002
Publications
- Lescroart, M.D., Nishimoto, S., & Gallant, J.L. (in preparation) Intermediate human visual areas represent the locations of boundary contours in naturalistic movies.
- Abdel-Ghaffar, Samy A; Huth, Alex G; Cowen, Alan S; Stansbury, Dustin E., Lescroart, Mark D; Gallant, Jack L.; & Bishop, Sonia J. (under review) Occipital-temporal cortical tuning to emotional natural images predicts associated behaviors.
- Lescroart, M.D. & Gallant, J.L (2019) Scene-selective areas in human cortex represent the orientation and distance of large surfaces in scenes. Neuron. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2018.11.004
- Lescroart, M. D., Kanwisher, N., & Golomb, J. D. (2016). No Evidence for Automatic Remapping of Stimulus Features or Location Found with fMRI. Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience, 10, 53. doi:10.3389/fnsys.2016.00053
- Lescroart, M.D., Stansbury, D., & Gallant, J.L. (2015) Fourier power, subjective distance, and object categories all provide plausible models of BOLD responses in scene-selective visual areas. Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience, 9:135. doi: 10.3389/fncom.2015.00135
- Gao, J. S., Huth, A. G., Lescroart, M. D., & Gallant, J. L. (2015). Pycortex: an interactive surface visualizer for fMRI. Frontiers in Neuroinformatics, 9. doi:10.3389/fninf.2015.00023
- Sato, T., Uchida, G., Lescroart, M. D., Kitazono, J., Okada, M., & Tanifuji, M. (2013) Object representation in inferior temporal cortex is organized hierarchically in a mosaic-like structure. The Journal of Neuroscience; 33(42), 16642-56. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.5557-12.2013
- Lescroart, M.D. & Biederman, I. Cortical representation of medial axis structure. (2012) Cerebral Cortex. (New York, N.Y. : 1991). doi:10.1093/cercor/bhs046
- Hayworth, K.J., Lescroart, M.D., & Biederman, I. (2011) Neural encoding of relative position. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance. 37(4), 1032-1050. doi:10.1037/a0022338
- Lescroart, M.D., Biederman, I., Yue, X., & Davidoff, J. (2010) A cross-cultural study of the representation of shape: Sensitivity to generalized cone dimensions. Visual Cognition.18:1, 50-66 First published on: 22 December 2008 (iFirst) [link/pdf]
- Kim, Jiye G., Biederman, I., Lescroart, M.D., & Hayworth, K.J. (2009) Adaptation in the Lateral Occipital Complex (LOC): Shape or Semantics? Vision Research, 49, 2297-2305
- Xu, X., Yue, X., Lescroart, M.D., Kim, J.G. & Biederman, I. (2009) Adaptation in the Fusiform Face Area (FFA): Image or Person? Vision Research, 49, 2800-2807
Selected conference presentations
- Lescroart, M.D., Agrawal, P, & Gallant, J.L. (2016) Both convolutional neural networks and voxel- wise encoding models of brain activity derived from ConvNets represent boundary-and surface- related features. Talk presented at the Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society, St. Petersburg, FL.
- <Lescroart, M.D., Stansbury, D. E., & Gallant, J.L. (2015) Semantics, space, and spatial frequency all describe the same representation in scene-selective areas of the human brain. Talk presented at the Society for Neuroscience meeting, Chicago, IL.
- Lescroart, M.D. & Gallant, J.L. (2015) A model of the local environment predicts responses in human scene-selective cortex. Talk presented at the Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society, St. Petersburg, FL.
- Lescroart, M.D., Nishimoto, S., & Gallant, J.L. (2014) Intermediate human visual areas represent the locations of silhouette edges in natural movies. Talk presented at the Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society, Naples, FL.
- Lescroart, M.D., Nishimoto, S., & Gallant, J.L. (2013) Representation of object contour features in intermediate visual areas in the human brain. Poster presented at the Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society, Naples, FL.
- Lescroart, M.D. & Biederman, I. (2011) The medial axis structures of novel objects are spontaneously perceived despite variability in the objects' orientations and component part shapes. Talk presented at the Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society, Naples, FL.
- Lescroart, M.D. & Biederman, I. (2010) Voxels in LO distinguish objects with different arrangements of the same component parts. Talk presented at the Society for Neuroscience meeting, San Diego, CA.
- Lescroart, M.D., Hayworth, K.J., & Biederman, I. (2009) Is there an object-centered map in LOC? Poster presented at the Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society, Naples, FL
- Lescroart, M.D., Yue, X., Davidoff, J., & Biederman, I. (2007). A Cross-Cultural Study of the Representation of Shape Dimensions. Talk presented at OPAM. Long Beach, CA
- Lescroart, M.D., Hayworth, K.J., & Biederman, I. (2007). Evidence for Relative Position Coding in the Posterior Fusiform Gyrus. Talk presented at Society for Neuroscience. San Diego, CA
Non-academic publications
- Lescroart, M.D. Favorite Colors: C olor Preference Determined by Desirability of Objects. Scientific American Mind, Sept./Oct. 2010
- Lescroart, M.D. The Healing Power of Touch: Tickling a rat's whiskers after it has a stroke prevents brain damage. Scientific American Mind, July/Aug. 2011
Awards
- Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (Postdoctoral NRSA)
- Mapping the representation of shape dimensions across the visual hierarchy (F32EY021710).
- Nov 2012-present
- USC Travel award for travel to OHBM meeting, Barcelona, Spain
- Jun 2010
- Rockwell Dennis Hunt Scholastic Award from the University of Southern California
- Awarded to the graduate student who is an alumnus and is most representative of the University's traditions and objectives
- Jan 2006
- Trustee (full tuition) Scholarship from the University of Southern California
- 1998-2002
- Recognized as a USC Renaissance Scholar
- For outstanding study in disparate disciplines
- May 2002
- Phi Beta Kappa National Honor Society
- Spring 2001