Seminar Series 2026: 2. Dr. Sam Reiter

Title: "Cephalopods as Biological Image Generators" Abstract: Cephalopods can change their skin pattern under neural control to camouflage with their surroundings. They are thought to accomplish this remarkable behavior through extracting summary statistics from their visual surroundings, mapping this to a latent representation of a pattern, and then rendering this skin pattern utilizing their motor system. In this way cephalopods can be profitably thought of in analogy to modern generative image models. I will describe work on cephalopod vision, sleep, and motor control that is beginning to reveal the details of how cephalopod active camouflage is accomplished. #animalbehavior #cephalopod #camouflage