Dale Purves

Dale Purves
Born	(1938-03-11)March 11, 1938
Fields	Neuroscience
Alma mater	Yale University Harvard Medical School
Website www.purveslab.net

Dale Purves (born March 11, 1938) is Geller Professor of Neurobiology Emeritus in the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences where he remains Research Professor with additional appointments in the department of Psychology and Brain Sciences, and the department of Philosophy at Duke University. He earned a B.A. from Yale University in 1960 and an M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1964. After further clinical training as a surgical resident at the Massachusetts General Hospital, service as a Peace Corps physician, and postdoctoral training at Harvard and University College London, he was appointed to the faculty at Washington University School of Medicine in 1973. He came to Duke in 1990 as the founding chair of the Department of Neurobiology at Duke Medical Center, and was subsequently Director of Duke's Center for Cognitive Neuroscience (2003-2009) and also served as the Director of the Neuroscience and Behavioral Disorders Program at the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School in Singapore (2009-2013).

Although Purves was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1989 for his work on neural development and synaptic plasticity, his research during the last 15 years has sought to explain why we see and hear what we do, focusing on the visual perception of lightness, color, form, and motion, and the auditory perception of music and speech.

In addition to membership in the National Academy of Sciences, Purves is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine. His books include Principles of Neural Development (with Jeff Lichtman; Sinaur,1985); Body and Brain (Harvard,1988); Neural Activity and the Growth of the Brain (Cambridge, 1992); Why We See What We Do (with Beau Lotto; Sinauer, 2003); Perceiving Geometry (with Catherine Howe; Springer 2005); Why We See What We Do Redux (Sinauer, 2011) and Brains: How they Seem to Work (Financial Times Press, 2011). He is also lead author on the textbooks Neuroscience, (5th edition, Sinauer, 2011), and Principles of Cognitive Neuroscience (2nd edition, Sinauer, 2012). A new book titled Music as Biology is scheduled for publication by Harvard University Press in the fall of 2016.

More information, access to publications and a complete CV are available at Official Website Purveslab.net.

Education

Purves was a surgical house officer at the Massachusetts General Hospital and a Peace Corps physician. His focus then changed from clinical medicine to neurobiology. In 1960, Purves received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Yale University and in 1964, a doctoral degree from Harvard Medical School. Purves took a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Neurobiology at Harvard University from 1968 to 1971 and in the Department of Biophysics, University College London, from 1971 to 1973.

Career

Purves joined the faculty of the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at the Washington University in 1971 and remained on staff until 1990. During that time he studied the development of the nervous system. He was elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1989.

In 1990, Purves founded the chair of the Department of Neurobiology at Duke University where he researched in the field of cognitive neuroscience, in particular visual and auditory perception.

Published works

Books

• Purves, D. (1985) Principles of Neural Development, Sinauer Associates, Sunderland, MA. ISBN 978-0878937448.
• Purves, D. et al (2003) Why we see what we do: An empirical theory of vision. Sinauer Associates, Sunderland, MA.
• Purves, D. et al. (2007) Principles of Cognitive Neuroscience Sinauer Associates, Sunderland, MA.
• Purves, D. et al (2008) Neuroscience 4th edition. Sinauer Associates, Sunderland, MA.
• Purves, D. (2010) Brains: How they Seem to Work. Financial Times Press, NJ.
• Purves, D. and Lotto, R. (2011) Why We See What We Do Redux: A Wholly Empirical Theory of Vision. Sinauer Associates, MA.

Articles

• Yang, Z. and Purves, D. (2003) Image/Source statistics in natural scenes. Network: Computation in Neural Systems 14: 371–390.
• Yang, Z and Purves, D. (2003) A statistical explanation of visual space. Nature, Neuroscience 6: 632–640.
• Schwartz, D., Howe, C.Q. and Purves, D. (2003) The statistical structure of human speech sounds predicts musical universals. J Neurosci 23:7160-7168.
• Howe, Q. and Purves, D. (2003) Size contrast explained by the statistics of scene geometry. J Cog Neurosci 16:90-102.
• Long, F. and Purves, D. (2003) Natural scene statistics as a universal basis for color context effects. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 100(25): 15190-15193.
• Purves, D. et al (2004) Perceiving the intensity of light. Psychological Rev 111(1):142–158.
• Yang, Z. and Purves, D. (2004) The statistical structure of natural light patterns determines perceived light intensity. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 101: 8745-8750.
• Schwartz, D. and Purves, D. (2004) Pitch is determined by naturally occurring periodic sounds. Hearing Research 194:31–46.
• Howe, C. and Purves, D. (2005) Natural scene geometry predicts the perception of angles and line orientation. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 102:1228-1233.
• Howe, C. and Purves, D. (2005) The Müller-Lyer illusion explained by the statistics of image-source relationships. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 102:1234-1239.
• Howe, C.,Yang, Z. and Purves, D. (2005) The Poggendorff illusion explained by natural scene statistics of image-source relationships. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 102:7707-7712.
• Long, F., Yang, Z. and Purves, D. (2006) Spectral statistics in natural scene predict hue, saturation, and brightness. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 103:6013-6018.
• Howe, C., Lotto, R. and Purves, D. (2006) Comparison of bayesian and empirical ranking approaches to visual perception. J Theor Biol 241:866-875.
• Boots, B., Nundy, S. and Purves, D. (2007) Evolution of visually-guided behavior in artificial agents. Network: Computation in Neural Systems 18(1):1-24.
• Ross, D., Choi, J. and Purves, D. (2007) Musical intervals in speech. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 104(23):9852-9857.
• Wojtach, W. et al (2008) An empirical explanation of the flash-lag effect. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 105(42):16338-16343.
• Sung, K., Wojtach, W. and Purves, D. (2009) An empirical explanation of aperture effects. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 106:298-303.
• Wojtach, W., Sung, K. and Purves, D. (2009) An empirical explanation of the speed-distance effect. PLoS ONE 4(8):e6771.
• Gill, K. and Purves, D. (2009) A biological rationale for musical scales. PLoS ONE 4:e8144.
• Bowling, D. et al (2010) Major and minor music compared to excited and subdued speech. J Acoust Soc Am 127(1): 491-503.
• Purves, D., Wojtach, W. and Lotto, R. (2011) Understanding vision in wholly empirical terms. Proc Natl Acad Sci Early Edition: 1-8.
• Han, S. et al (2011) Co-variation of tonality in the music and speech of different cultures. PLoS ONE 6(5):e20160.
• Ng, C. et al (2013) Network Connections That Evolve to Circumvent the Inverse Optics Problem. PLoS ONE 8(3): e60490. 1. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0060490.
• Monson, B. Han, S. and Purves, D. (2013) Are Auditory Percepts Determined by Experience? PLoS ONE 8(5): e63728.
• Purves, D. et al (2014). How biological vision succeeds in the physical world. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111:4750-4755.
• Bowling, D. et al Expression of Emotion in Eastern and Western Music Mirrors Vocalization. PLoS 14 March 2012. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0031942.

See also

• Empirical theories of perception

References

News and magazine articles

• Official Website Purveslab.net.
• Choi, C. Explaining the aperture illusion. Scientific American 29 March 2009.
• Musical chords mimic the emotion of speech. Daily News and Analysis, India,15 December 2009.
• The Biology of music: why we like what we like. Boing Boing 14 December 2009.
• Vieru, T. Music, Emotions and Speech form a whole. Softpedia 3 December 2009.
• Duke team Explains Longtime visual puzzler in new way. Duke Medicine News and Communications 13 October 2008.
• Kruglinski, S. Musical scales mimic of language. Discover Magazine, 100 Top Science Stories of 2007. January 2008.
• Scientists explain the 'flash-lag' effect. Science News, United Press 14 October 2008.
• Thank K. In search of music's biological roots. Duke Magazine May 2008.
• Bates, K. The Essential tones of Music rooted in Human Speech Duke University 25 May 2007
• ScienceDaily Essential tones of music rooted in human speech. Science Daily 24 May 2007.
• Hareyan, A. Brain Statistics help humans perceive hue, saturation and brightness. 6 April 2006
• Meredith, D. New book explains age-old mystery of geometrical illusions. Duke News Releases 30 September 2005.
• Vision is a ‘reflex’, says new book. Duke Medicine News and Communications 3 January 2003.
• Farley, P. Musical roots may lie in human voice. Newscientist.com August 3, 2003.
• Keneally, C. Songs of ourselves. Boston Globe 9 November 2003.
• Meredith, D. Solving the mystery of musical harmony: Insights from a study of speech. Duke News Releases, 5 August 2003.
• How We See Transcript from News Hour with Jim Lehrer 25 December 2002.
• Meredith, D. Color scheme: new vision theory states perception of color depends on neural reflexes. Dialogue, Duke University 2000 5(3).
• Works by or about Dale Purves in libraries (WorldCat catalog)