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The Journal of Neuroscience : the... May 2023From moment to moment, the visual properties of objects in the world fluctuate because of external factors like ambient lighting, occlusion and eye movements, and...
From moment to moment, the visual properties of objects in the world fluctuate because of external factors like ambient lighting, occlusion and eye movements, and internal (proximal) noise. Despite this variability in the incoming information, our perception is stable. Serial dependence, the behavioral attraction of current perceptual responses toward previously seen stimuli, may reveal a mechanism underlying stability: a spatiotemporally tuned operator that smooths over spurious fluctuations. The current study examined the neural underpinnings of serial dependence by recording the electroencephalographic (EEG) brain response of female and male human observers to prototypical objects (faces, cars, and houses) and morphs that mixed properties of two prototypes. Behavior was biased toward previously seen objects. Representational similarity analysis (RSA) revealed that responses evoked by visual objects contained information about the previous stimulus. The trace of previous representations in the response to the current object occurred immediately on object appearance, suggesting that serial dependence arises from a brain state or set that precedes processing of new input. However, the brain response to current visual objects was not representationally similar to the trace they leave on subsequent object representations. These results reveal that while past stimulus history influences current representations, this influence does not imply a shared neural code between the previous trial (memory) and the current trial (perception). The perception of visual objects is pulled toward instances of that object seen in the recent past. The neural underpinnings of this serial dependence remain to be fully investigated. The present study examined electroencephalographic (EEG) responses to faces, cars, and houses, and ambiguous between-category morphs. With representational similarity analysis (RSA), we showed (1) object-specific neural patterns that differentiate the three categories; (2) that the response to the current object contains information about the previous object, mirroring behavioral serial dependence; (3) that the object-specific neural pattern about the past was different from that in the current response, revealing that while past stimulus history influences current representations, this does not imply a shared neural code between the previous trial (memory) and the current trial (perception).
Topics: Male; Humans; Female; Visual Perception; Brain; Eye Movements; Brain Mapping; Electroencephalography; Pattern Recognition, Visual; Photic Stimulation
PubMed: 36944487
DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2068-22.2023 -
Annual Review of Vision Science Sep 2021Coordination between different sensory systems is a necessary element of sensory processing. Where and how signals from different sense organs converge onto common... (Review)
Review
Coordination between different sensory systems is a necessary element of sensory processing. Where and how signals from different sense organs converge onto common neural circuitry have become topics of increasing interest in recent years. In this article, we focus specifically on visual-auditory interactions in areas of the mammalian brain that are commonly considered to be auditory in function. The auditory cortex and inferior colliculus are two key points of entry where visual signals reach the auditory pathway, and both contain visual- and/or eye movement-related signals in humans and other animals. The visual signals observed in these auditory structures reflect a mixture of visual modulation of auditory-evoked activity and visually driven responses that are selective for stimulus location or features. These key response attributes also appear in the classic visual pathway but may play a different role in the auditory pathway: to modify auditory rather than visual perception. Finally, while this review focuses on two particular areas of the auditory pathway where this question has been studied, robust descending as well as ascending connections within this pathway suggest that undiscovered visual signals may be present at other stages as well.
Topics: Animals; Auditory Cortex; Mammals; Sensation; Sense Organs; Visual Pathways; Visual Perception
PubMed: 34242053
DOI: 10.1146/annurev-vision-091517-034003 -
Vision Research Aug 2019
Topics: Humans; Psychophysics; Reading; Visual Perception
PubMed: 31194983
DOI: 10.1016/j.visres.2019.06.002 -
Neuron Oct 2022Substantial experimental, theoretical, and computational insights into sensory processing have been derived from the phenomena of perceptual multistability-when two or... (Review)
Review
Substantial experimental, theoretical, and computational insights into sensory processing have been derived from the phenomena of perceptual multistability-when two or more percepts alternate or switch in response to a single sensory input. Here, we review a range of findings suggesting that alternations can be seen as internal choices by the brain responding to values. We discuss how elements of external, experimenter-controlled values and internal, uncertainty- and aesthetics-dependent values influence multistability. We then consider the implications for the involvement in switching of regions, such as the anterior cingulate cortex, which are more conventionally tied to value-dependent operations such as cognitive control and foraging.
Topics: Brain; Uncertainty; Vision, Binocular; Visual Perception
PubMed: 36041434
DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2022.07.024 -
Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology Aug 2022The purpose of this study was to develop and test models of scanning activity in football. Gibson's ecological approach of visual perception and exploratory activity...
The purpose of this study was to develop and test models of scanning activity in football. Gibson's ecological approach of visual perception and exploratory activity provided the theoretical framework for the models. The video-based data analysis consisted of 17 selected matches and 239 players of the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) U17 and U19 European Championship 2018 and the UEFA U17 and U21 European Championship 2019. The results showed a positive relation between scanning frequency and successful passes, as well as changes in body orientation. Scanning frequency was also related to a player's appearances in national teams and to opponent pressure. Opponent pressure had a large effect on pass result and the player's body orientation. Previous research on the relation between scanning frequency and performance was extended by several contextual predictors. Future research should focus on gaining a deeper understanding of the relation between scanning frequency and further contextual variables related to scanning.
Topics: Humans; Soccer; Visual Perception
PubMed: 35468590
DOI: 10.1123/jsep.2020-0299 -
NeuroImage Oct 2022Research on face perception has revealed highly specialized visual mechanisms such as configural processing, and provided markers of interindividual differences...
Research on face perception has revealed highly specialized visual mechanisms such as configural processing, and provided markers of interindividual differences -including disease risks and alterations- in visuo-perceptual abilities that traffic in social cognition. Is face perception unique in degree or kind of mechanisms, and in its relevance for social cognition? Combining functional MRI and behavioral methods, we address the processing of an uncharted class of socially relevant stimuli: minimal social scenes involving configurations of two bodies spatially close and face-to-face as if interacting (hereafter, facing dyads). We report category-specific activity for facing (vs. non-facing) dyads in visual cortex. That activity shows face-like signatures of configural processing -i.e., stronger response to facing (vs. non-facing) dyads, and greater susceptibility to stimulus inversion for facing (vs. non-facing) dyads-, and is predicted by performance-based measures of configural processing in visual perception of body dyads. Moreover, we observe that the individual performance in body-dyad perception is reliable, stable-over-time and correlated with the individual social sensitivity, coarsely captured by the Autism-Spectrum Quotient. Further analyses clarify the relationship between single-body and body-dyad perception. We propose that facing dyads are processed through highly specialized mechanisms -and brain areas-, analogously to other biologically and socially relevant stimuli such as faces. Like face perception, facing-dyad perception can reveal basic (visual) processes that lay the foundations for understanding others, their relationships and interactions.
Topics: Brain; Facial Recognition; Humans; Pattern Recognition, Visual; Social Perception; Visual Cortex; Visual Perception
PubMed: 35878724
DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2022.119506 -
Consciousness and Cognition Aug 2023This study investigates bistable perception as a function of the presentation side of the ambiguous figures and of participants' sex, to evaluate left-right hemispheric...
This study investigates bistable perception as a function of the presentation side of the ambiguous figures and of participants' sex, to evaluate left-right hemispheric (LH-RH) asymmetries related to consciousness. In two experiments using the divided visual field paradigm, two Rubin's vase-faces figures were projected simultaneously and continuously 180 s long to the left (LVF) and right (RVF; Experiment 1) or to the upper (UVF) and lower (DVF; Experiment 2) visual hemifields of 48 healthy subjects monitored with eye-tracker. Experiment 1 enables stimulus segregation from the LVF to the RH and from the RVF to the LH, whereas Experiment 2 does not. Results from Experiment 1 show that males perceived the face profiles for more time in the LVF than in the RVF, with an opposite trend for the vase, whereas females show a similar pattern of perception in the two hemifields. A related result confirmed the previously reported possibility to have simultaneously two different percepts (qualia) in the two hemifields elicited by the two identic ambiguous stimuli, which was here observed to occur more frequently in males. Similar effects were not observed in Experiment 2. These findings suggest that the percepts display the processing abilities of the hemisphere currently processing the stimulus eliciting them (e.g., RH-faces), and that females and males reflect in bistable perception, a genuine manifestation of consciousness, the well-known hemispheric asymmetry differences they show in ordinary perception.
Topics: Male; Female; Humans; Visual Perception; Visual Fields; Functional Laterality
PubMed: 37429212
DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2023.103551 -
Cortex; a Journal Devoted To the Study... Nov 2020Human vision serves the social function of detecting and discriminating with high efficiency conspecifics and other animals. The social world is made of social entities...
Human vision serves the social function of detecting and discriminating with high efficiency conspecifics and other animals. The social world is made of social entities as much as the relations between those entities. Recent work demonstrates that vision encodes visuo-spatial relations between bodies with the same efficiency and high specialization of face/body perception. Specifically, perception of face-to-face (vs. non-facing) bodies evokes effects compatible with the most robust markers of face-specificity such as the behavioral inversion effect and increased activity in selective visual areas. Another set of results suggests that face-to-face bodies are processed as a grouped unit, analogously to facial features in a face. The facing dyad in the visual cortex may be the earliest rudimentary representation of social interaction.
Topics: Animals; Facial Recognition; Humans; Pattern Recognition, Visual; Social Perception; Visual Cortex; Visual Perception
PubMed: 32698947
DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2020.06.005 -
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal... Sep 2023To navigate and guide adaptive behaviour in a dynamic environment, animals must accurately estimate their own motion relative to the external world. This is a... (Review)
Review
To navigate and guide adaptive behaviour in a dynamic environment, animals must accurately estimate their own motion relative to the external world. This is a fundamentally multisensory process involving integration of visual, vestibular and kinesthetic inputs. Ideal observer models, paired with careful neurophysiological investigation, helped to reveal how visual and vestibular signals are combined to support perception of linear self-motion direction, or heading. Recent work has extended these findings by emphasizing the dimension of time, both with regard to stimulus dynamics and the trade-off between speed and accuracy. Both time and certainty-i.e. the degree of confidence in a multisensory decision-are essential to the ecological goals of the system: terminating a decision process is necessary for timely action, and predicting one's accuracy is critical for making multiple decisions in a sequence, as in navigation. Here, we summarize a leading model for multisensory decision-making, then show how the model can be extended to study confidence in heading discrimination. Lastly, we preview ongoing efforts to bridge self-motion perception and navigation , including closed-loop virtual reality and active self-motion. The design of unconstrained, ethologically inspired tasks, accompanied by large-scale neural recordings, raise promise for a deeper understanding of spatial perception and decision-making in the behaving animal. This article is part of the theme issue 'Decision and control processes in multisensory perception'.
Topics: Animals; Motion Perception; Space Perception; Vestibule, Labyrinth; Movement; Adaptation, Psychological; Visual Perception; Photic Stimulation
PubMed: 37545301
DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2022.0333 -
Annual Review of Vision Science Sep 2020In studying visual perception, we seek to develop models of processing that accurately predict perceptual judgments. Much of this work is focused on judgments of... (Review)
Review
In studying visual perception, we seek to develop models of processing that accurately predict perceptual judgments. Much of this work is focused on judgments of discrimination, and there is a large literature concerning models of visual discrimination. There are, however, non-threshold visual judgments, such as judgments of the magnitude of differences between visual stimuli, that provide a means to bridge the gap between threshold and appearance. We describe two such models of suprathreshold judgments, maximum likelihood difference scaling and maximum likelihood conjoint measurement, and review recent literature that has exploited them.
Topics: Discrimination, Psychological; Humans; Judgment; Light; Likelihood Functions; Visual Perception
PubMed: 32421445
DOI: 10.1146/annurev-vision-030320-041152