Different Motion Cues Are Used to Estimate Time-to-arrival for Frontoparallel and Loming Trajectories

Estimation of time-to-arrival for moving objects is critical to obstacle interception and avoidance, as well as to timing actions such as reaching and grasping moving objects. The source of motion information that conveys arrival time varies with the trajectory of the object raising the question of whether multiple context-dependent mechanisms are involved in this computation. To address this question we conducted a series of psychophysical studies to measure observers’ performance on time-to-arrival estimation when object trajectory was specified by angular motion (“gap closure” trajectories in the frontoparallel plane), looming (colliding trajectories, TTC) or both (passage courses, TTP). We measured performance of time-to-arrival judgments in the presence of irrelevant motion, in which a perpendicular motion vector was added to the object trajectory. Data were compared to models of expected performance based on the use of different components of optical information. Our results demonstrate that for gap closure, performance depended only on the angular motion, whereas for TTC and TTP, both angular and looming motion affected performance. This dissociation of inputs suggests that gap closures are mediated by a separate mechanism than that used for the detection of time-to-collision and time-to-passage. We show that existing models of TTC and TTP estimation make systematic errors in predicting subject performance, and suggest that a model which weights motion cues by their relative time-to-arrival provides a better account of performance

Photoemission Spectra from Reduced Density Matrices: the Band Gap in Strongly Correlated Systems

We present a method for the calculation of photoemission spectra in terms of reduced density matrices. We start from the spectral representation of the one-body Green's function G, whose imaginary part is related to photoemission spectra, and we introduce a frequency-dependent effective energy that accounts for all the poles of G. Simple approximations to this effective energy give accurate spectra in model systems in the weak as well as strong correlation regime. In real systems reduced density matrices can be obtained from reduced density-matrix functional theory. Here we use this approach to calculate the photoemission spectrum of bulk NiO: our method yields a qualitatively correct picture both in the antiferromagnetic and paramagnetic phases, contrary to mean-field methods, in which the paramagnet is a metal

Cross-modal cue effects in motion processing

The everyday environment brings to our sensory systems competing inputs from different modalities. The ability to filter these multisensory inputs in order to identify and efficiently utilize useful spatial cues is necessary to detect and process the relevant information. In the present study, we investigate how feature-based attention affects the detection of motion across sensory modalities. We were interested to determine how subjects use intramodal, cross-modal auditory, and combined audiovisual motion cues to attend to specific visual motion signals. The results showed that in most cases, both the visual and the auditory cues enhance feature-based orienting to a transparent visual motion pattern presented among distractor motion patterns. Whereas previous studies have shown cross-modal effects of spatial attention, our results demonstrate a spread of cross-modal feature-based attention cues, which have been matched for the detection threshold of the visual target. These effects were very robust in comparisons of the effects of valid vs. invalid cues, as well as in comparisons between cued and uncued valid trials. The effect of intramodal visual, cross-modal auditory, and bimodal cues also increased as a function of motion-cue salience. Our results suggest that orienting to visual motion patterns among distracters can be facilitated not only by intramodal priors, but also by feature-based cross-modal information from the auditory system.First author draf

Unions of slices are not slices

Many approaches to slicing rely upon the 'fact' that the union of two static slices is a valid slice. It is known that static slices constructed using program dependence graph algorithms are valid slices (Reps and Yang, 1988). However, this is not true for other forms of slicing. For example, it has been established that the union of two dynamic slices is not necessarily a valid dynamic slice (Hall, 1995). In this paper this result is extended to show that the union of two static slices is not necessarily a valid slice, based on Weiser's definition of a (static) slice. We also analyse the properties that make the union of different forms of slices a valid slice

B2 and G2 Toda systems on compact surfaces: a variational approach

We consider the B2 and G2 Toda systems on compact surfaces. We attack the problem using variational techniques. We get existence and multiplicity of solutions under a topological assumption on the surface and some generic conditions on the parameters. We also extend some of the results to the case of general systems.Comment: 28 pages, accepted on Journal of Mathematical Physic

Integration Mechanisms for Heading Perception

Previous studies of heading perception suggest that human observers employ spatiotemporal pooling to accommodate noise in optic flow stimuli. Here, we investigated how spatial and temporal integration mechanisms are used for judgments of heading through a psychophysical experiment involving three different types of noise. Furthermore, we developed two ideal observer models to study the components of the spatial information used by observers when performing the heading task. In the psychophysical experiment, we applied three types of direction noise to optic flow stimuli to differentiate the involvement of spatial and temporal integration mechanisms. The results indicate that temporal integration mechanisms play a role in heading perception, though their contribution is weaker than that of the spatial integration mechanisms. To elucidate how observers process spatial information to extract heading from a noisy optic flow field, we compared psychophysical performance in response to random-walk direction noise with that of two ideal observer models (IOMs). One model relied on 2D screen-projected flow information (2D-IOM), while the other used environmental, i.e., 3D, flow information (3D-IOM). The results suggest that human observers compensate for the loss of information during the 2D retinal projection of the visual scene for modest amounts of noise. This suggests the likelihood of a 3D reconstruction during heading perception, which breaks down under extreme levels of noise