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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Visual Perception and the Brain by Duke University

4.6
stars
261 ratings

About the Course

Learners will be introduced to the problems that vision faces, using perception as a guide. The course will consider how what we see is generated by the visual system, what the central problem for vision is, and what visual perception indicates about how the brain works. The evidence will be drawn from neuroscience, psychology, the history of vision science and what philosophy has contributed. Although the discussions will be informed by visual system anatomy and physiology, the focus is on perception. We see the physical world in a strange way, and goal is to understand why....

Top reviews

DB

Jun 11, 2020

This is a great course dealt meticulously. The carefully crafted audiovisual study material and quizzes together with very inspiring video lectures helped understand and learn with great enthusiasm.

PC

Feb 28, 2020

I am currently undertaking a PhD in visual inspection techniques for aircraft maintenance tasks and i found this course excellent. Dale is a wealth of knowledge and delivered an excellent course.

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51 - 67 of 67 Reviews for Visual Perception and the Brain

By Maria L S

Nov 17, 2017

Excellent course!

By Rustan A

May 25, 2017

A revelation...

By Rubidha.G

Jul 7, 2020

It's good

By Kavin P

Jul 9, 2020

My long term curiosity of the question, 'why do we perceive the world - the way we do?' - has been either answered or shown a path for deeper understanding. Being a Mechanical Engineering student, I had almost none prior knowledge regarding human brain and its anatomy - but that wasn't an issue either! - everything has been explained very well with examples and wonderful illustrations.

Thank You Duke University and Coursera, for such an amazing course!

By Pramit B

Dec 18, 2016

Course was amazing. It deals with how to correctly understand visual illusions through empirical data collection. It does not delve into the anatomical aspects, or the cellular aspects, of vision. Some drawbacks would be the lack of explanation on how to model or collect the data, which is probably too complicated to state in a online course anyway.

By Chris L

Jan 22, 2017

great layout and well presented. concepts were stimulating and I felt I learnt a lot. I would have liked some discussion around topics such as amblyopia and development, effects of observer movement, and the links between visual perception and the vestibular system. Having said that, I think the content was plenty for a 5 week course.

By Carol L M H

Mar 29, 2022

I really liked Dr. Purves as a lecturer, and I really got a lot out of this course, including some really good illustrations and explanations. However, it was a very difficult course, and I felt the final assignment was very difficult to complete.

By Alessandro R

Jan 27, 2018

The course is very interesting, it explains the basic features of the human visual system in a nice and understandable way, providing many interesting example of how our perceptron is affected by the external world and our own experience.

By Shreya T

Jan 26, 2017

It is a must for all those who would love to explore vision at the perspective of neuroscience and evolution.

By Himanshu A

Jun 17, 2018

Although the course material is absolutely fantastic. Some concepts should be elucidated further.

By Sharon R

Sep 5, 2016

Very well researched and articulate professor, incredibly knowledgeable.

By Luna A

Feb 28, 2022

Interesting course, although the peer-review part could use some work

By David B

Apr 20, 2017

Great Job!

By Xuanwei L 黎

Sep 7, 2022

The course is more about psychophysics rather than neuroscience. It is relatively the combination of psychology and neuroscience (more psychology but it can inspire thoughts about neuronal pathway). Personally I have alternative thoughts against some of the ideas in this course. 

The empirical thoughts explain everything using human experience. But the lecturer took it as a fact rather than a hypothesis that needs testing. Obviously there are correlation between those factors but it is really the ‘reason’? 

Human experience is a vague word. What part or aspect of experience is related to the perception is not explained or at least mentioned. For example, in the geometry section, my hypothesis would be it was caused by perspective: We artificially put identical figures into picture with perspective (reflection of 3D world). Our brain will analysis the context according to the experience of the real world and then define curving, distortion or depth at different sites of this imagine. By retrospective referring, the analyses about figures at different locations will differ. So it could be, not the perception, but the analyses (information processing in parts of the prefrontal cortex, higher ‘level’ of visual cortex etc. which shares the similar structures in cerebellum) that gives ‘illusions’. 

The data from ‘Frequency of Occurrence of Angles’ is too good to be true. 

Again, the explanation of the angel perception is not credible enough. 

If this ‘illusion’ is based on human experience, it is imaginable to do similar behavioural test on human babies to see the actual window and amount of experience that a human need to gain this psychophysical discrepancy. (Genetical and structural analysis is also applicable) 

In the courses of motion, it will be better to have video for demonstration. 

After all, it is a very inspiring course and it generates a perspective of view for (potential) neuroscientists. 

By Dorothy H

Aug 15, 2016

I don't like that the 3 and 4 star reviews are missing!

Coursera seems to sometimes remove reviews with lower numbers of starts.

I thought that this course was going to be mostly on the brain, but it wasn't at all.... just a small section.

If your main interest is in vision then it might be different, but for me being interested only in how vision relates to the brain, there was very little useful information in this course for me.

By Tammy H

May 22, 2020

The Professor explains things in a long and sometimes confusing manner, it takes a while to get used to and understand concepts.

By ­최광민

Sep 30, 2021

Plain repetition of a single theme. Pen needs to be used appropriately. Grading is extremely slow - took a month.