Nadja Oertelt

Nadja Oertelt

Brooklyn, New York, United States
1K followers 500+ connections

Join to view profile

Activity

Join now to see all activity

Education

Publications

  • Human by Design: An Ethical Framework for Human Augmentation

    IEEE Technology and Society Magazine

    Rapid advances in science and technology are opening doors for the fulfillment of human desires in ways that were not previously possible. Neural, genetic, pharmacological, and physical forms of augmentation of the human experience promise to multiply both in number and complexity over the next decades. It is our responsibility to create a public, open discourse around the ethical implications of technology that will shape what it means to be human in the near and distant future.

    See publication

  • Craniofacial modularity, character analysis, and the evolution of the premaxilla in early African hominins

    Journal of Human Evolution

    Phylogenetic analyses require evolutionarily independent characters, but there is no consensus, nor has there been a clear methodology presented on how to define character independence in a phylogenetic context, particularly within a complex morphological structure such as the skull. Following from studies of craniofacial development, we hypothesize that the premaxilla is an independent evolutionary module with two integrated characters that have traditionally been treated as independent. We…

    Phylogenetic analyses require evolutionarily independent characters, but there is no consensus, nor has there been a clear methodology presented on how to define character independence in a phylogenetic context, particularly within a complex morphological structure such as the skull. Following from studies of craniofacial development, we hypothesize that the premaxilla is an independent evolutionary module with two integrated characters that have traditionally been treated as independent. We test this hypothesis on a large sample of primate skulls and find evidence supporting the premaxilla as an independent module within the larger module of the palate. Additionally, our data indicate that the convexity of the nasoalveolar clivus and the contour of the alveolus are integrated within the premaxilla. We show that the palate itself is composed of two distinct modules: the FNP-derived premaxillae and the mxBA1-derived maxillae and palatines. Application of our data to early African hominin facial morphology suggests that at least three separate transitions contributed to robust facial morphology: 1) an increase in the size of the post-canine dentition housed within the maxillae and palatines, 2) modification of the premaxilla generating a concave clivus and reduced incisor alveolus, and 3) modification of the zygomatic, shifting the zygomatic root and lateral face anteriorly. These data lend support to the monophyly of Paranthropus boisei and Paranthropus robustus, and provide mounting evidence in favor of a Paranthropus clade. This study also highlights the utility of applying developmental evidence to studies of morphological evolution.

    See publication

  • A rodent model for the study of invariant visual object recognition

    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

    The human visual system is able to recognize objects despite tremendous variation in their appearance on the retina resulting from variation in view, size, lighting, etc. This ability—known as “invariant” object recognition—is central to visual perception, yet its computational underpinnings are poorly understood. Traditionally, nonhuman primates have been the animal model-of-choice for investigating the neuronal substrates of invariant recognition, because their visual systems closely mirror…

    The human visual system is able to recognize objects despite tremendous variation in their appearance on the retina resulting from variation in view, size, lighting, etc. This ability—known as “invariant” object recognition—is central to visual perception, yet its computational underpinnings are poorly understood. Traditionally, nonhuman primates have been the animal model-of-choice for investigating the neuronal substrates of invariant recognition, because their visual systems closely mirror our own. Meanwhile, simpler and more accessible animal models such as rodents have been largely overlooked as possible models of higher-level visual functions, because their brains are often assumed to lack advanced visual processing machinery. As a result, little is known about rodents' ability to process complex visual stimuli in the face of real-world image variation. In the present work, we show that rats possess more advanced visual abilities than previously appreciated. Specifically, we trained pigmented rats to perform a visual task that required them to recognize objects despite substantial variation in their appearance, due to changes in size, view, and lighting. Critically, rats were able to spontaneously generalize to previously unseen transformations of learned objects. These results provide the first systematic evidence for invariant object recognition in rats and argue for an increased focus on rodents as models for studying high-level visual processing.

    See publication

  • 'Breaking'​ position-invariant object recognition

    Nature Neuroscience

    While it is often assumed that objects can be recognized irrespective of where they fall on the retina, little is known about the mechanisms underlying this ability. By exposing human subjects to an altered world where some objects systematically changed identity during the transient blindness that accompanies eye movements, we induced predictable object confusions across retinal positions, effectively 'breaking' position invariance. Thus, position invariance is not a rigid property of vision…

    While it is often assumed that objects can be recognized irrespective of where they fall on the retina, little is known about the mechanisms underlying this ability. By exposing human subjects to an altered world where some objects systematically changed identity during the transient blindness that accompanies eye movements, we induced predictable object confusions across retinal positions, effectively 'breaking' position invariance. Thus, position invariance is not a rigid property of vision but is constantly adapting to the statistics of the environment.

    See publication

More activity by Nadja

View Nadja’s full profile

  • See who you know in common
  • Get introduced
  • Contact Nadja directly
Join to view full profile

Other similar profiles

Explore more posts

Explore collaborative articles

We’re unlocking community knowledge in a new way. Experts add insights directly into each article, started with the help of AI.

Explore More

Add new skills with these courses

See all courses