Object Representation In Visual Systems. A Multidisciplinary Approach

Abstract

Previous Work: The first question in the search for a representation is the characterization of the reference frame in which the object is coded. Is it object-centered (like most artificial systems use today) or is it a collection of object views? Psychophysical experiments that have used as stimuli a variety of novel object in a recognition task have shown that in this case the reference frame used by the human visual system is viewcentered [1, 4]. If subjects learn an object only from a single viewpoint, their ability in recognizing different views of the same object varies with the distance from the learned view. This psychophysical result has been reinforced by neurophysiological findings. Recordings in IT cortex of monkeys that were performing the same recognition task as humans show cells tuned to specific views of the learned object. Decay rate for the cells are similar to the decay of the performance rates [2]. An object could be therefore be thought as represented by