Mid-level mechanisms of surface and binocular perception

表面和双眼感知的中层机制

• 批准号: 9328096
• 负责人: Zijiang He
• 金额: $ 35.61万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF LOUISVILLE
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2014
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2014-08-01 至 2019-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9328096
• 关键词: 3-Dimensional; Affect; Aging; Amblyopia; Attention; Behavioral; Clinical; Code; Color; Complex; Crowding; Diagnosis; Ensure; Environment; Eye; Feedback; Frequencies; Functional disorder; Goals; Grant; Human; Image; Knowledge; Link; Location; Measurement; Motion; Occupations; Ownership; Pattern; Perception; Perceptual learning; Play; Process; Property; Protocols documentation; Psychophysics; Research; Resolution; Retinal; Role; Space Perception; Strabismus; Surface; System; Testing; Texture; Time; Training; Visual; Visual Perception; Visual system structure; detector; experimental study; falls; feeding; imaging properties; improved; luminance; neurophysiology; noninvasive diagnosis; object perception; object shape; operation; public health relevance; visual information; visual processing; visual stimulus

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Retinal images are inherently fragmentary and ambiguous because images of separate entities overlap. But the early visual mechanisms are not equipped to parse the overlapping 2-D retinal images into distinct 3-D entities. The job of parsing these images falls on the mid-level mechanisms, whose main role is to represent the distinct entities as separate surfaces. The represented surface information then serves as inputs to the WHAT and WHERE systems that underlie our 3-D perception of objects and space, respectively. As such, the mid-level mechanisms are not just simple "conduits" of information between early and late level visual mechanisms but play a crucial role in determining the quality and reliability of the visual information conveyed. Compared to other aspects of visual processing, less is known about the mid-level mechanisms. One of the biggest challenges is to discover how the often fragmentary and ambiguous retinal information is transformed into reliable surface representations, presumably, through a spreading-in operation. At times, when an image belonging to the same entity is broken into parts due to occlusion, a surface interpolation operation is required to integrate the parts into a global surface. Moreover, inputs from the two eyes that contribute to these operations can be disparate in content and location. In the face of the myriad complexities of the visual inputs, it is further proposed that the mid-level mechanisms must rely on internal assumptions (perceptual rules) and feedbacks from the higher visual levels for guidance in representing surfaces. But how these operations are accomplished is still unclear. Remedying it, this proposal uses the human psychophysical approach to investigate the above issues by focusing on three specific aims. Aim 1 investigates how the spreading-in operation represents surfaces with texture patterns, which is more complex than representing texture-free surfaces. It is proposed the principle of reducing coding redundancy that governs the spreading-in operation causes the global surface representation operation to be efficient but prone to poor resolution. The latter could be one basis of the well-known "crowding effect" phenomenon. Aim 2 investigates the texture-surface interpolation operation. Cognizant of the roles of attention and object knowledge, the research investigates how these top-down factors influence surface integration. Aim 3 investigates the long-term plasticity of the mid-level mechanisms. Perceptual learning experiments will be conducted to reveal how extensive training modifies the perceptual rules implemented at the mid-level. The long-term goal of this proposal is to advance our knowledge of how visual information is processed and represented by the mid-level mechanisms. This knowledge helps us better understand how humans perceive the visual world, and provides a clinical basis for behavioral diagnoses and treatments of visual dysfunctions related to amblyopia, strabismus and aging.

描述（由申请人提供）：视网膜图像本质上是碎片化且模糊的，因为不同实体的图像重叠。但早期的视觉机制无法将重叠的 2D 视网膜图像解析为不同的 3D 实体。解析这些图像的工作落在中层机制上，其主要作用是将不同的实体表示为单独的表面。然后，所表示的表面信息将分别作为我们对物体和空间的 3D 感知的基础的 WHAT 和 WHERE 系统的输入。因此，中层机制不仅仅是早期和晚期视觉机制之间的简单信息“管道”，而且在确定所传达的视觉信息的质量和可靠性方面发挥着至关重要的作用。与视觉处理的其他方面相比，人们对中层机制知之甚少。最大的挑战之一是发现如何将经常碎片和模糊的视网膜信息转化为可靠的表面表征，大概是通过扩散操作。有时，当属于同一实体的图像由于遮挡而被分成多个部分时，需要表面插值操作将这些部分整合到全局表面中。此外，参与这些操作的两只眼睛的输入在内容和位置上可能是不同的。面对视觉输入的无数复杂性，进一步提出中层机制必须依赖于内部假设（感知规则）和来自更高视觉层的反馈来指导表示表面。但这些操作是如何完成的仍不清楚。为了解决这个问题，该提案使用人类心理物理学方法来研究上述问题，重点关注三个具体目标。目标 1 研究扩散操作如何表示具有纹理图案的表面，这比表示无纹理表面更复杂。提出了减少控制扩展操作的编码冗余的原则，导致全局表面表示操作高效但容易出现分辨率差的情况。后者可能是众所周知的“拥挤效应”现象的基础之一。目标 2 研究纹理表面插值操作。认识到注意力和物体知识的作用，该研究调查了这些自上而下的因素如何影响表面整合。目标 3 研究中层机制的长期可塑性。将进行感知学习实验，以揭示广泛的训练如何改变中级实施的感知规则。该提案的长期目标是增进我们对中层机制如何处理和表示视觉信息的了解。这些知识有助于我们更好地了解人类如何感知视觉世界，并为弱视、斜视和衰老相关视觉功能障碍的行为诊断和治疗提供临床依据。