Christof Koch

Who they are: Christof Koch is a neuroscientist known for his work on the biological basis of consciousness and visual attention. He is President and Chief Scientist of the Allen Institute for Brain Science and was previously a professor at Caltech, where he collaborated for years with Francis Crick on theories of consciousness.

The concept HaELM draws from: With Laurent Itti, Koch co-developed the computational model of visual “saliency” that predicts which parts of a scene draw the eye first, based on low-level features like contrast and motion, ahead of any conscious interpretation. Decode uses this framework to explain why certain visual elements of an ad grab attention before the viewer processes what the ad is actually saying.

Decode articles where their thinking appears: Spider-Man Took Over Times Square. It Didn’t Need to Say Anything Else.

Source: Wikipedia, “Christof Koch”; Allen Institute for Brain Science leadership bio.