Human cortical areas involved in perception of surface glossiness

AbstractGlossiness is the visual appearance of an object's surface as defined by its surface reflectance properties. Despite its ecological importance, little is known about the neural substrates underlying its perception. In this study, we performed the first human neuroimaging experiments that directly investigated where the processing of glossiness resides in the visual cortex. First, we investigated the cortical regions that were more activated by observing high glossiness compared with low glossiness, where the effects of simple luminance and luminance contrast were dissociated by controlling the illumination conditions (Experiment 1). As cortical regions that may be related to the processing of glossiness, V2, V3, hV4, VO-1, VO-2, collateral sulcus (CoS), LO-1, and V3A/B were identified, which also showed significant correlation with the perceived level of glossiness. This result is consistent with the recent monkey studies that identified selective neural response to glossiness in the ventral visual pathway, except for V3A/B in the dorsal visual pathway, whose involvement in the processing of glossiness could be specific to the human visual system. Second, we investigated the cortical regions that were modulated by selective attention to glossiness (Experiment 2). The visual areas that showed higher activation to attention to glossiness than that to either form or orientation were identified as right hV4, right VO-2, and right V3A/B, which were commonly identified in Experiment 1. The results indicate that these commonly identified visual areas in the human visual cortex may play important roles in glossiness perception

Estimation of Central Black Hole Masses in LowLuminosity Active Galactic Nuclei

Abstract We analyzed six low-luminosity active galactic nuclei (hereafter LLAGNs), which consist of two bright LINERs (low-ionization nuclear emission line region) with broad Hα, and of four bright low-luminosity Seyferts observed by the X-ray satellite ASCA. We examined the time variabilities of these targets, and found that most targets show no significant time variabilities, although these galaxies belong to LLAGNs. By applying Fourier analysis to their light curves in the 2-10 keV band, we obtained the lower limits of their time variability scales, which correspond to their central black hole masses greater than several times 10 6 M . Our result suggests that these LLAGNs are harbors of super-massive black holes, but the emitting powers are only < 1% of the Eddington luminosities of the central engines in the LLAGNs due to their small accretion rates. Since a black hole would grow by mass accretion, it is hard to create such a super-massive black hole under a small accretion rate. Therefore, the mass-accretion rates in the past must have been larger than those at present, and the galaxies have probably been as luminous as QSOs. This will be a hint to find out the cause of the lack of QSOs in the local universe

Localization of Human Cortical Areas Underlying Glossiness Perception: An fMRI Study

We conducted two fMRI experiments to clarify what cortical areas are involved in perception of surface glossiness. To dissociate activations caused by glossiness from those caused by low-level features such as luminance and luminance contrast of the stimulus, we utilized the perceptual glossiness constancy (Experiment 1) and the selective attention technique (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, subjects viewed glossy or matte objects under bright or dim illumination. The mean luminance and luminance RMS contrast of glossy objects under dim illumination were lower than those of matte objects under bright illumination. Thus, if certain areas are more activated by the former stimulus than the latter, the activation differences can be explained by the differences in surface glossiness but not by the differences in mean luminance or luminance RMS contrast of the stimulus. In Experiment 2, subjects judged whether the paired objects were the same or different in terms of glossiness, 3D form, or 3D orientation. If certain areas are more activated during the glossiness discrimination task than the other two tasks, it is suggested that the areas are involved in glossiness perception. Common areas identified as those involved in glossiness perception in both experiments are bilateral ventral occipital areas