480 research outputs found
Bioplausible multiscale filtering in retino-cortical processing as a mechanism in perceptual grouping
Why does our visual system fail to reconstruct reality, when we look at
certain patterns? Where do Geometrical illusions start to emerge in the visual
pathway? How far should we take computational models of vision with the same
visual ability to detect illusions as we do? This study addresses these
questions, by focusing on a specific underlying neural mechanism involved in
our visual experiences that affects our final perception. Among many types of
visual illusion, Geometrical and, in particular, Tilt Illusions are rather
important, being characterized by misperception of geometric patterns involving
lines and tiles in combination with contrasting orientation, size or position.
Over the last decade, many new neurophysiological experiments have led to new
insights as to how, when and where retinal processing takes place, and the
encoding nature of the retinal representation that is sent to the cortex for
further processing. Based on these neurobiological discoveries, we provide
computer simulation evidence from modelling retinal ganglion cells responses to
some complex Tilt Illusions, suggesting that the emergence of tilt in these
illusions is partially related to the interaction of multiscale visual
processing performed in the retina. The output of our low-level filtering model
is presented for several types of Tilt Illusion, predicting that the final tilt
percept arises from multiple-scale processing of the Differences of Gaussians
and the perceptual interaction of foreground and background elements. Our
results suggest that this model has a high potential in revealing the
underlying mechanism connecting low-level filtering approaches to mid- and
high-level explanations such as Anchoring theory and Perceptual grouping.Comment: 23 pages, 8 figures, Brain Informatics journal: Full text access:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40708-017-0072-
Visual masking: past accomplishments, present status, future developments
Visual masking, throughout its history, has been used as an investigative tool in
exploring the temporal dynamics of visual perception, beginning with retinal
processes and ending in cortical processes concerned with the conscious
registration of stimuli. However, visual masking also has been a phenomenon
deemed worthy of study in its own right. Most of the recent uses of visual
masking have focused on the study of central processes, particularly those
involved in feature, object and scene representations, in attentional control
mechanisms, and in phenomenal awareness. In recent years our understanding of
the phenomenon and cortical mechanisms of visual masking also has benefited from
several brain imaging techniques and from a number of sophisticated and
neurophysiologically plausible neural network models. Key issues and problems
are discussed with the aim of guiding future empirical and theoretical
research
Cortical origins of MacKay-type visual illusions. A case for the non-linearity
To study the interaction between retinal stimulation by redundant geometrical
patterns and the cortical response in the primary visual cortex (V1), we focus
on the MacKay effect (Nature, 1957) and Billock and Tsou's experiments (PNAS,
2007). Starting from a classical biological model of neuronal fields equations
with a non-linear response function, we use a controllability approach to
describe these phenomena. The external input containing a localised control
function is interpreted as a cortical representation of the static visual
stimuli used in these experiments. We prove that while the MacKay effect is
essentially a linear phenomenon (i.e., the nonlinear nature of the activation
does not play any role in its reproduction), the phenomena reported by Billock
and Tsou are wholly nonlinear and depend strongly on the shape of the
nonlinearity used to model the response function
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