Michael J. Tarr is an American cognitive neuroscientist who currently holds the Kavčić-Moura Professorship in Cognitive and Brain Science. He is a professor at

Carnegie-Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a Private university, private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The institution was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools. In 1912, it became t ...

, a recipient of the APA Distinguished Scientific Award for an Early Career Contribution to Psychology from the

American Psychological Association The American Psychological Association (APA) is the main professional organization of psychologists in the United States, and the largest psychological association in the world. It has over 170,000 members, including scientists, educators, clin ...

in 1997, a recipient of the Troland Award from the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the ...

in 2003, a Guggenheim Fellow in 2007, and an Elected Fellow of the

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is a United States–based international nonprofit with the stated mission of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsib ...

Education

Tarr is a 1980 graduate of

Taylor Allderdice High School Taylor Allderdice High School is a public high school in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The school was established in 1927 and is part of the Pittsburgh Public Schools district. It was named for industrialist and S ...

. He earned his B.A at

Cornell University Cornell University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson W ...

in 1984 and his Ph.D. at

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

Research

He is an expert in visual perception and how brain transforms 2D images into high-level percepts. His work focuses on face, object and scene processing and recognition in both biological and artificial systems. His highest cited paper is ''Activation of the middle fusiform 'face area' increases with expertise in recognizing novel objects'' at 1459 times, according to Google Scholar.

Publications

*Chang, N., Pyles, J. A., Marcus, A., Gupta, A., Tarr, M.J., & Aminoff, E. M. (2019). BOLD5000, a public fMRI dataset while viewing 5000 visual images. Scientific Data, 6(1), 49. *Tarr, M. J., & Aminoff, E. M. (2016). Can Big Data Help Us Understand Human Vision? In M. Jones (Ed.), Big Data in Cognitive Science. Taylor & Francis: Psychology Press. *Aminoff, E. M., Toneva, M., Shrivastava, A., Chen, X., Misra, I., Gupta, A., & Tarr, M. J. (2015). Applying artificial vision models to human scene understanding. Front. Comput. Neurosci., 9. *Leeds, D. D., Pyles, J. A., & Tarr, M. J. (2014). Exploration of complex visual feature spaces for object perception. Front. Comput. Neurosci., 8(106). *Yang, Y., Tarr, M. J., & Kass, R. E. (2014). Estimating learning effects: A short-time Fourier transform regression model for MEG source localization. In Springer Lecture Notes on Artificial Intelligence: MLINI 2014: Machine learning and interpretation in neuroimaging. *Leeds, D. D., Seibert, D. A., Pyles, J. A., & Tarr, M. J. (2013). Comparing visual representations across human fMRI and computational vision. J. of Vision. 13(13).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tarr, Michael J. Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Carnegie Mellon University faculty Cornell University alumni 21st-century American psychologists