Involuntary orienting to sound improves visual perception

To perceive real-world objects and events, we need to integrate several stimulus features belonging to different sensory modalities. Although the neural mechanisms and behavioural consequences of intersensory integration have been extensively studied, the processes that enable us to pay attention to multimodal objects are still poorly understood. An important question is whether a stimulus in one sensory modality automatically attracts attention to spatially coincident stimuli that appear subsequently in other modalities, thereby enhancing their perceptual salience. The occurrence of an irrelevant sound does facilitate motor responses to a subsequent light appearing nearby. However, because participants in previous studies made speeded responses rather than psychophysical judgements, it remains unclear whether involuntary auditory attention actually affects the perceptibility of visual stimuli as opposed to postperceptual decision and response processes. Here we provide psychophysical evidence that a sudden sound improves the detectability of a subsequent flash appearing at the same location. These data show that the involuntary orienting of attention to sound enhances early perceptual processing of visual stimuli.     

Clonally related visual cortical neurons show similar stimulus feature selectivity

A fundamental feature of the mammalian neocortex is its columnar organization. In the visual cortex, functional columns consisting of neurons with similar orientation preferences have been characterized extensively, but how these columns are constructed during development remains unclear. The radial unit hypothesis posits that the ontogenetic columns formed by clonally related neurons migrating along the same radial glial fibre during corticogenesis provide the basis for functional columns in adult neocortex. However, a direct correspondence between the ontogenetic and functional columns has not been demonstrated. Here we show that, despite the lack of a discernible orientation map in mouse visual cortex, sister neurons in the same radial clone exhibit similar orientation preferences. Using a retroviral vector encoding green fluorescent protein to label radial clones of excitatory neurons, and in vivo two-photon calcium imaging to measure neuronal response properties, we found that sister neurons preferred similar orientations whereas nearby non-sister neurons showed no such relationship. Interestingly, disruption of gap junction coupling by viral expression of a dominant-negative mutant of Cx26 (also known as Gjb2) or by daily administration of a gap junction blocker, carbenoxolone, during the first postnatal week greatly diminished the functional similarity between sister neurons, suggesting that the maturation of ontogenetic into functional columns requires intercellular communication through gap junctions. Together with the recent finding of preferential excitatory connections among sister neurons, our results support the radial unit hypothesis and unify the ontogenetic and functional columns in the visual cortex.     

Practising orientation identification improves orientation coding in V1 neurons

The adult brain shows remarkable plasticity, as demonstrated by the improvement in fine sensorial discriminations after intensive practice. The behavioural aspects of such perceptual learning are well documented, especially in the visual system. Specificity for stimulus attributes clearly implicates an early cortical site, where receptive fields retain fine selectivity for these attributes; however, the neuronal correlates of a simple visual discrimination task remained unidentified. Here we report electrophysiological correlates in the primary visual cortex (V1) of monkeys for learning orientation identification. We link the behavioural improvement in this type of learning to an improved neuronal performance of trained compared to naive neurons. Improved long-term neuronal performance resulted from changes in the characteristics of orientation tuning of individual neurons. More particularly, the slope of the orientation tuning curve that was measured at the trained orientation increased only for the subgroup of trained neurons most likely to code the orientation identified by the monkey. No modifications of the tuning curve were observed for orientations for which the monkey had not been trained. Thus training induces a specific and efficient increase in neuronal sensitivity in V1.     

整体拓扑性质的视知觉与计算

提出了一个早期视觉的可能的计算模型，把几何特征分为局部特征与全局特征，认为早期视觉中感知局部几何性质和全局拓扑性质先天运动感知，先于形状感知。模型本质上虽然仍然是读物上，但已不是的传统的ｖｏｎ Ｎｅｕｍａｎｎ的顺序计算，而是非ｖｏｎ Ｎｅｕｍａｎｎ的平行计算，它为计算理论和拓扑性质检测问题之间的矛盾提供了一个可能的解决方法。     

Serial and parallel processing of visual feature conjunctions

Treisman and others have reported that the visual search for a target distinguished along a single stimulus dimension (for example, colour or shape) is conducted in parallel, whereas the search for an item defined by the conjunction of two stimulus dimensions is conducted serially. For a single dimension the target 'pops out' and the search time is independent of the number of irrelevant items in the set. For conjunctions, the search time increases as the set becomes larger. Thus, it seems that the visual system is incapable of conducting a parallel search over two stimulus dimensions simultaneously. Here we extend this conclusion for the conjunction of motion and colour, showing that it requires a serial search. We also report two exceptions: if one of the dimensions in a conjunctive search is stereoscopic disparity, a second dimension of either colour or motion can be searched in parallel.     

Dynamics of travelling waves in visual perception

Nonlinear wave propagation is ubiquitous in nature, appearing in chemical reaction kinetics, cardiac tissue dynamics, cortical spreading depression and slow wave sleep. The application of dynamical modelling has provided valuable insights into the mechanisms underlying such nonlinear wave phenomena in several domains. Wave propagation can also be perceived as sweeping waves of visibility that occur when the two eyes view radically different stimuli. Termed binocular rivalry, these fluctuating states of perceptual dominance and suppression are thought to provide a window into the neural dynamics that underlie conscious visual awareness. Here we introduce a technique to measure the speed of rivalry dominance waves propagating around a large, essentially one-dimensional annulus. When mapped onto visual cortex, propagation speed is independent of eccentricity. Propagation speed doubles when waves travel along continuous contours, thus demonstrating effects of collinear facilitation. A neural model with reciprocal inhibition between two layers of units provides a quantitative explanation of dominance wave propagation in terms of disinhibition. Dominance waves provide a new tool for investigating fundamental cortical dynamics.     

基于人眼视觉系统的运动图像视觉感知模拟

讨论了人眼在观看平板显示屏上运动图像时视觉失真的产生原因,并通过视觉感知实验对已有的视觉感知模型进行了修正,提出了将空间积分的影响加入到视觉感知模型中的改进方法.本文还利用该模型对一些显示屏上运动图像的视觉感知过程进行了模拟,结果表明,采用本文提出的模型获得的运动图像的视觉感知效果图更加接近人眼实际所观测到的图像.本文提出的视觉感知模型以及相关的软件模拟结果为进一步优化显示器件的驱动方法提供了评估手段.     

视知觉在建筑造型中的应用

建筑属于视觉感知的艺术,从本质上讲是建筑对象内在关系及其和谐程度的表现形式。本文拟就景观建筑造型、视觉信息传达与人的心理效应间的深层联系进行一些初浅的探索。     

Preserved figure-ground segregation and symmetry perception in visual neglect.

A central controversy in current research on visual attention is whether figures are segregated from their background preattentively, or whether attention is first directed to unstructured regions of the image. Here we present neurological evidence for the former view from studies of a brain-injured patient with visual neglect. His attentional impairment arises after normal segmentation of the image into figures and background has taken place. Our results indicate that information which is neglected and unavailable to higher levels of visual processing can nevertheless be processed by earlier stages in the visual system concerned with segmentation.     

A computational theory for the perception of coherent visual motion

When we see motion, our perception of how one image feature moves depends on the behaviour of other features nearby. In particular, the Gestaltists proposed the law of shared common fate, in which features tend to be perceived as moving together, that is, coherently. Recent psychophysical findings, such as the cooperativity of the motion system and motion capture, support this law. Computationally, coherence is a sensible assumption, because if two features are close then they probably belong to the same object and thus tend to move together. Moreover, the measurement of local motion may be inaccurate and so the integration of motion information over large areas may help to improve the performance. Present theories of visual motion, however, do not account fully for these coherent motion percepts. We propose here a theory that does account for these phenomena and also provides a solution to the aperture problem, where the local information in the image flow is insufficient to specify the motion uniquely.     

基于视觉显著性和特征点匹配增强的 运动目标跟踪框架

为了解决主流目标跟踪算法在目标遮挡、快速位移和光照变化等不利条件下易发生跟踪不稳定的问题,提出一种视觉显著性和特征点匹配增强的目标跟踪框架,当瞬时跟踪结果经判别达到SURF特征点匹配阈值时,触发跟踪增强机制,提取图像的时域、频域和空域显著性得到综合的显著图,然后执行邻近匹配策略搜索显著图各显著区域以找到目标最可能的存在区域.本文框架是在传统跟踪方法的基础上加入了独立的增强机制,因此并不局限于某一种特定跟踪方法,具有良好的可扩充性和通用性.实验结果表明,该框架能有效克服多种不利因素的带来的干扰,可实现复杂背景下目标的准确跟踪.     

一种基于小波变换的模糊视觉感知水印算法

为了进一步提高目前小波数字水印算法的抗干扰能力,本文提出了一种改进后的小波变换视觉感知模型,设计了一种基于高斯函数的方差和均值的模糊推理规则并将其引入到小波视觉感知模型中,通过上述方法改善了小波视觉感知模型数字水印的抗干扰性能,特别是明显改善了抗压缩攻击的性能。实验结果证明：该算法可进一步提高小波视觉感知数字水印的抗干扰性能,改善其鲁棒性。     

A comparison of inhibition in orientation and spatial frequency selectivity of cat visual cortex

Neurones in the visual cortex are highly selective for orientation and spatial frequency of visual stimuli. There is strong neurophysiological evidence that orientation selectivity is enhanced by inhibitory interconnections between columns in the cortex which have different orientation sensitivities, an idea which is supported by experiments using neuropharmacological manipulation or complex visual stimuli. It has also been proposed that selectivity for spatial frequency is mediated in part by a similar mechanism to that for orientation, although evidence for this is based on special use of visual stimuli, which hampers interpretation of the findings. We have therefore examined selectivity for both orientation and spatial frequency using a technique which allows direct inferences about inhibitory processes. Our method uses microiontophoresis of an excitatory amino acid to elevate maintained discharge of single neurones in the visual cortex. We then present visual stimuli both within and outside the range of orientations and spatial frequencies which cause a cell to respond with increased discharge. Our results show that orientations presented on either side of the responsive range usually produce clear suppression of maintained discharge. In marked contrast, spatial frequencies shown to either side of the responsive range have little or no effect on maintained activity. We conclude that there is an intracortical organization of inhibitory connections between cells tuned to different orientations but not different spatial frequencies.     

Segregation of pathways leading from area V2 to areas V4 and V5 of macaque monkey visual cortex

V5 and V4 are areas of macaque monkey prestriate visual cortex that are specialized for involvement in different aspects of visual perception, namely motion for V5 (refs 1-4) and colour vision, with other possible functions, for V4 (refs 2, 5-9). Thus, it is unlikely that they should be fed the same information for further processing, yet both receive a strong input from patches of the upper layers of V2 (refs 10, 11), the area immediately adjoining the primary visual cortex, V1. V2, however, seems to comprise functionally distinct subregions, which can be revealed by staining the tissue for the mitochondrial enzyme cytochrome oxidase. Here we report that V4 and V5 are connected with separate cytochrome oxidase-defined subregions of V2, suggesting that cortical pathways dealing with motion and colour perception are segregated in their passage through V2, and reinforcing evidence for functional specialization in the visual cortex.     

水果防碰损采摘的视觉认知及其执行机构研究进展

研发水果采摘机器人对提高收获效率、保证果实品质和减轻劳动强度具有重要意义,但由于果园环境的非结构性,使得采摘机器人极易因目标定位不准、采摘顺序不当、夹剪位姿不合理等导致果实碰伤或刮落,造成该损伤的主要原因是防碰损采摘的视觉认知与执行机构耦合问题尚未得到解决。为梳理水果采摘机器人防碰损作业的最新研究进展,从防碰损采摘中果实多维信息（采摘点、果梗位姿、防碰空间包围体等）的视觉感知、采摘机器人的视觉认知与智能防碰损采摘行为规划、防损采摘机构设计及其行为控制等三方面进行了全面综述和分析,并对今后需重点解决的核心关键问题进行总结和展望,为进一步研究和攻克非结构环境下水果智能防碰损采摘问题提供参考和依据。     

智能车环境视觉感知及其关键技术研究现状

环境视觉感知技术是智能车获取外界环境信息的主要手段,是智能车进行自主驾驶的前提条件。在综合分析以不同检测对象为目标的检测技术方法的基础上,给出了环境视觉感知研究的主要内容,讨论了研究涉及的关键技术:车道检测技术、车辆检测技术、行人检测技术、交通标志检测技术,并对每种检测技术各子技术的优点和不足之处进行了分析。在总结全文的基础上,提出未来智能驾驶中环境视觉感知技术的主要发展趋势包括:基于多特征融合的环境视觉感知技术的发展;复杂环境下多种环境感知技术的融合应用;三维图像在图像处理方面的应用;改进的卷积神经网络(CNN)方法在图像处理方面的应用。