David Marr
Encyclopedia
David Courtnay Marr was a British
neuroscientist
and psychologist
. Marr integrated results from psychology
, artificial intelligence
, and neurophysiology
into new models of visual processing
. His work was very influential in Computational Neuroscience
and led to a resurgence of interest in the discipline.
Born in Woodford, Essex
, and educated at Rugby School
; he was admitted at Trinity College, Cambridge
on 1 October 1963 (having been awarded the Lees Knowles Rugby Exhibition).
He was awarded the Coutts Trotter Scholarship in 1966 and obtained his BA in mathematics
the same year and got his Ph.D. in physiology
under Professor G.S. Brindley
in 1972. His interest turned from general brain theory to visual processing. His doctoral dissertation was submitted in 1969 and described his model of the function of the cerebellum
based mainly on anatomical and physiological data garnered from a book by J.C. Eccles
. A similar model was later independently proposed by James S. Albus
. Subsequently he worked at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
, where he took on a faculty appointment in the Department of Psychology in 1977 and was subsequently made a tenured full professor in 1980. Marr proposed that understanding the brain
requires an understanding of the problems it faces and the solutions it finds. He emphasized the need to avoid general theoretical debates and instead focus on understanding specific problems.
Marr died of leukemia
in Cambridge, Massachusetts
. Marr's findings are collected in the book Vision: A computational investigation into the human representation and processing of visual information (ISBN 0-7167-1567-8), which was published after his death and re-issued in 2010 by The MIT Press (see References). He was married to Lucia M. Vaina of Boston University's Department of Biomedical Engineering and Neurology. The Marr Prize
, one of the most prestigious awards in computer vision
, is named in his honor.
) the idea that one must understand information processing systems at three distinct, complementary levels of analysis. This idea is known in cognitive science as Marr's Tri-Level Hypothesis:
Francis Crick
noted that this insight although seminal, has been somewhat modified.
2.5D sketch is related to stereopsis
, optic flow, and motion parallax. The 2.5D sketch represents that in reality we do not see all of our surroundings but construct the viewer-centered three dimensional view of our environment. 2.5D Sketch is a paraline drawing and often referred to by its generic term "axonometric" or "isometric" drawing and are often used by modern architects and designers.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
neuroscientist
Neuroscientist
A neuroscientist is an individual who studies the scientific field of neuroscience or any of its related sub-fields...
and psychologist
Psychologist
Psychologist is a professional or academic title used by individuals who are either:* Clinical professionals who work with patients in a variety of therapeutic contexts .* Scientists conducting psychological research or teaching psychology in a college...
. Marr integrated results from psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
, artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
, and neurophysiology
Neurophysiology
Neurophysiology is a part of physiology. Neurophysiology is the study of nervous system function...
into new models of visual processing
Visual processing
Visual processing is the sequence of steps that information takes as it flows from visual sensors to cognitive processing. The sensors may be zoological eyes or they may be cameras or sensor arrays that sense various portions of the electromagnetic spectrum....
. His work was very influential in Computational Neuroscience
Computational neuroscience
Computational neuroscience is the study of brain function in terms of the information processing properties of the structures that make up the nervous system...
and led to a resurgence of interest in the discipline.
Born in Woodford, Essex
Essex
Essex is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England, and one of the home counties. It is located to the northeast of Greater London. It borders with Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent to the South and London to the south west...
, and educated at Rugby School
Rugby School
Rugby School is a co-educational day and boarding school located in the town of Rugby, Warwickshire, England. It is one of the oldest independent schools in Britain.-History:...
; he was admitted at Trinity College, Cambridge
Trinity College, Cambridge
Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Trinity has more members than any other college in Cambridge or Oxford, with around 700 undergraduates, 430 graduates, and over 170 Fellows...
on 1 October 1963 (having been awarded the Lees Knowles Rugby Exhibition).
He was awarded the Coutts Trotter Scholarship in 1966 and obtained his BA in mathematics
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
the same year and got his Ph.D. in physiology
Physiology
Physiology is the science of the function of living systems. This includes how organisms, organ systems, organs, cells, and bio-molecules carry out the chemical or physical functions that exist in a living system. The highest honor awarded in physiology is the Nobel Prize in Physiology or...
under Professor G.S. Brindley
Giles Brindley
Sir Giles Skey Brindley, GBE , is a British physiologist, musicologist and composer.He made important contributions to the treatment of erectile dysfunction, and is perhaps best known for an unusual scientific presentation at the 1983 Las Vegas meeting of the American Urological Association, where...
in 1972. His interest turned from general brain theory to visual processing. His doctoral dissertation was submitted in 1969 and described his model of the function of the cerebellum
Cerebellum
The cerebellum is a region of the brain that plays an important role in motor control. It may also be involved in some cognitive functions such as attention and language, and in regulating fear and pleasure responses, but its movement-related functions are the most solidly established...
based mainly on anatomical and physiological data garnered from a book by J.C. Eccles
John Carew Eccles
John Carew Eccles, AC FRS FRACP FRSNZ FAAS was an Australian neurophysiologist who won the 1963 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on the synapse. He shared the prize with Andrew Huxley and Alan Lloyd Hodgkin....
. A similar model was later independently proposed by James S. Albus
James S. Albus
James Sacra Albus was an American engineer, Senior NIST Fellow and founder and former chief of the Intelligent Systems Division of the Manufacturing Engineering Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology .- Biography :Born in Louisville Ky., Albus received the B.S...
. Subsequently he worked at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
, where he took on a faculty appointment in the Department of Psychology in 1977 and was subsequently made a tenured full professor in 1980. Marr proposed that understanding the brain
Brain
The brain is the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals—only a few primitive invertebrates such as sponges, jellyfish, sea squirts and starfishes do not have one. It is located in the head, usually close to primary sensory apparatus such as vision, hearing,...
requires an understanding of the problems it faces and the solutions it finds. He emphasized the need to avoid general theoretical debates and instead focus on understanding specific problems.
Marr died of leukemia
Leukemia
Leukemia or leukaemia is a type of cancer of the blood or bone marrow characterized by an abnormal increase of immature white blood cells called "blasts". Leukemia is a broad term covering a spectrum of diseases...
in Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...
. Marr's findings are collected in the book Vision: A computational investigation into the human representation and processing of visual information (ISBN 0-7167-1567-8), which was published after his death and re-issued in 2010 by The MIT Press (see References). He was married to Lucia M. Vaina of Boston University's Department of Biomedical Engineering and Neurology. The Marr Prize
Marr Prize
The Marr Prize is a prestigious award in computer vision given by the committee of the International Conference on Computer Vision. Named after David Marr, the Marr Prize is considered one of the top honors for a computer vision researcher....
, one of the most prestigious awards in computer vision
Computer vision
Computer vision is a field that includes methods for acquiring, processing, analysing, and understanding images and, in general, high-dimensional data from the real world in order to produce numerical or symbolic information, e.g., in the forms of decisions...
, is named in his honor.
Levels of analysis
Marr treated vision as an information processing system. He put forth (in concert with Tomaso PoggioTomaso Poggio
Tomaso Armando Poggio, born in Genoa, Italy, is the Eugene McDermott Professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, an investigator at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research, a member of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and the director of The Center...
) the idea that one must understand information processing systems at three distinct, complementary levels of analysis. This idea is known in cognitive science as Marr's Tri-Level Hypothesis:
- computational level: what does the system do (e.g.: what problems does it solve or overcome) and, equally importantly, why does it do these things
- algorithmic/representational level: how does the system do what it does, specifically, what representations does it use and what processes does it employ to build and manipulate the representations
- implementational level: how is the system physically realized (in the case of biological vision, what neural structures and neuronal activities implement the visual system)
Stages of vision
Marr described vision as proceeding from a two-dimensional visual array (on the retina) to a three-dimensional description of the world as output. His stages of vision include- a primal sketch of the scene, based on feature extraction of fundamental components of the scene, including edges, regions, etc. Note the similarity in concept to a pencil sketch drawn quickly by an artist as an impression.
- a 2.5D2.5D (visual perception)2.5D describes effects in visual perception — especially stereoscopic vision — where the 3D environment of the observer is projected onto the 2D planes of the retinas. Thus, while the effect is still effectively 2D, it allows for depth perception...
sketch of the scene, where textures are acknowledged, etc. Note the similarity in concept to the stage in drawing where an artist highlights or shades areas of a scene, to provide depth. - a 3 D model, where the scene is visualized in a continuous, 3-dimensional map.
Francis Crick
Francis Crick
Francis Harry Compton Crick OM FRS was an English molecular biologist, biophysicist, and neuroscientist, and most noted for being one of two co-discoverers of the structure of the DNA molecule in 1953, together with James D. Watson...
noted that this insight although seminal, has been somewhat modified.
2.5D sketch is related to stereopsis
Stereopsis
Stereopsis refers to impression of depth that is perceived when a scene is viewed with both eyes by someone with normal binocular vision. Binocular viewing of a scene creates two slightly different images of the scene in the two eyes due the the eyes' different positions on the head...
, optic flow, and motion parallax. The 2.5D sketch represents that in reality we do not see all of our surroundings but construct the viewer-centered three dimensional view of our environment. 2.5D Sketch is a paraline drawing and often referred to by its generic term "axonometric" or "isometric" drawing and are often used by modern architects and designers.
Publications
- (1969) "A theory of cerebellar cortex." J. Physiol., 202:437-470.
- (1970) "A theory for cerebral neocortex." Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B, 176:161-234.
- (1971) "Simple memory: a theory for archicortex." Phil. Trans. Royal Soc. London, 262:23-81.
- (1974) "The computation of lightness by the primate retina." Vision Research, 14:1377-1388.
- (1975) "Approaches to biological information processing." Science, 190:875-876.
- (1976) "Early processing of visual information." Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B, 275:483-524.
- (1976) "Cooperative computation of stereo disparity." Science, 194:283-287. (with Tomaso Poggio)
- (1976, March) "Artificial intelligence: A personal view." Technical Report AIM 355, MIT AI Laboratory, Cambridge, MA.
- (1977) "Artificial intelligence: A personal view." Artificial Intelligence 9(1), 37–48.
- (1977) "From understanding computation to understanding neural circuitry." Neurosciences Res. Prog. Bull., 15:470-488. (with Tomaso Poggio)
- (1978) "Representation and recognition of the spatial organization of three dimensional shapes." Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B, 200:269-294. (with H. K. Nishihara)
- (1979) "A computational theory of human stereo vision." Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B, 204:301-328. (with Tomaso Poggio)
- (1980) "Theory of edge detection." Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B, 207:187-217. (with E. Hildreth)
- (1981) "Artificial intelligence: a personal view." In Haugeland, J., ed., Mind Design, chapter 4, pages 129-142. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
- (1982) "Representation and recognition of the movements of shapes." Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B, 214:501-524. (with L. M. Vaina)
- (1982). Vision: A Computational Investigation into the Human Representation and Processing of Visual Information. New York: Freeman.