I am a fifth year graduate student in the Brain and Cognitive Science Program in the Department of Psychology at the University of Southern California. Before coming to USC, I received BS and MS degree in Biomedical Engineering from Southeast University in Nanjing, China.

  My research in the Image Understanding Lab is directed toward an understanding of neural mechanisms underlying object and face recognition. It is remarkable how we so effortlessly, with only a rare error, extract so much information from so many faces, objects, and scenes that we encounter in our everyday lives. How we achieve this level of proficiency remains a challenge to the most state-of-art computer vision systems.

  I use both psychophysical and fMRI methodologies with healthy individuals and those who suffered circumscribed cortical lesions that resulted in prosopagnosia. My current project investigates how the identity of a face is represented in human ventral visual pathway, with respect to the face's perceptual shapes, as well as the associated semantic information.

Publications

Xu, X., & Biederman, I. (2010). Loci of the release from fMRI adaptation for changes in facial expression, identity and viewpoint. Journal of Vision, 10(14):36, 1-13. doi:10.1167/10.14.36. [PDF]

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. [PDF]

Xu, X., & Zhou, X. (2007). Conflict adaptation in the perception of emotional valence in a Stroop task. Progress in Natural Science, 17(B07), 122-125. [PDF]

Wang, L., Xu, X., & Zhou, X. (2011) Neural correlates of the Simon effect and its reversal in Hedge and Marsh tasks. Poster presented at the 7th Asia-Pacific Conference on Vision (APCV), Hong Kong.

Xu, X., Lescroart, M.D., & Biederman, I. (2011) No recovery of function for a specific deficit in individuating faces 40 years after a lesion in the ventral occipito-temporal cortices at age five. Talk presented at the 11th Annual Meeting of Vision Science Society (VSS), Naples, FL.

Amir, O., Xu, X. & Biederman, I. (2011) The spontaneous appeal by naive subjects to nonaccidental properties when distinguishing among highly similar members of subspecies of birds generates the experts' birdguide. Poster presented at the 11th Annual Meeting of Vision Science Society (VSS), Naples, FL.

Xu, X. & Biederman, I. (2010) Categorical effect in the release of adaptation in the face network. Poster presented at the 10th Annual Meeting of Vision Science Society (VSS), Naples, FL. [Poster]

Xu, X., Yue, X., Lescroart, M.D., Kim, J.G. & Biederman, I. (2009) Adaptation in the Fusiform Face Area (FFA): Image or Person? Poster presented at the 9th Annual Meeting of Vision Science Society (VSS), Naples, FL. [Poster]

Amir, O., Hayworth, K.J., Biederman, I., Lescroart, M., Xu, X., Kim, J.G. (2009). At What Stage in the Human Ventral Pathway is the Greater Sensitivity to Nonaccidental over Metric Properties First Manifested? Poster presented at the Annual Meeting of Vision Science Society, Naples, FL.

University of Southern California,
Hedco Neurosciences Building, Rm. 316, MC 2520
3641 Watt Way
Los Angeles, CA 90089-2520
Email: xiaokunx@usc.edu
Lab Phone: 213-740-6102
Fax: (213) 740-5687