Spatial frequency analsis in early visual processing

The existence of multiple channels, or multiple receptive field sizes, in the visual system does not commit us to any particular theory of spatial encoding in vision. However, distortions of apparent spatial frequency and width in a wide variety of conditions favour the idea that each channel carries a width- or frequency-related code or ‘label’ rather than a ‘local sign’ or positional label. When distortions of spatial frequency occur without prior adaptation (e.g. at low contrast or low luminance) they are associated with lowered sensitivity, and may be due to a mismatch between the perceptual labels and the actual tuning of the channels. A low-level representation of retinal space could be constructed from the spatial information encoded by the channels, rather than being projected intact from the retina.

2021 ◽  
Vol 226 (4) ◽  
pp. 989-1006
Author(s):  
Ilenia Salsano ◽  
Valerio Santangelo ◽  
Emiliano Macaluso

AbstractPrevious studies demonstrated that long-term memory related to object-position in natural scenes guides visuo-spatial attention during subsequent search. Memory-guided attention has been associated with the activation of memory regions (the medial-temporal cortex) and with the fronto-parietal attention network. Notably, these circuits represent external locations with different frames of reference: egocentric (i.e., eyes/head-centered) in the dorsal attention network vs. allocentric (i.e., world/scene-centered) in the medial temporal cortex. Here we used behavioral measures and fMRI to assess the contribution of egocentric and allocentric spatial information during memory-guided attention. At encoding, participants were presented with real-world scenes and asked to search for and memorize the location of a high-contrast target superimposed in half of the scenes. At retrieval, participants viewed again the same scenes, now all including a low-contrast target. In scenes that included the target at encoding, the target was presented at the same scene-location. Critically, scenes were now shown either from the same or different viewpoint compared with encoding. This resulted in a memory-by-view design (target seen/unseen x same/different view), which allowed us teasing apart the role of allocentric vs. egocentric signals during memory-guided attention. Retrieval-related results showed greater search-accuracy for seen than unseen targets, both in the same and different views, indicating that memory contributes to visual search notwithstanding perspective changes. This view-change independent effect was associated with the activation of the left lateral intra-parietal sulcus. Our results demonstrate that this parietal region mediates memory-guided attention by taking into account allocentric/scene-centered information about the objects' position in the external world.


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (5) ◽  
pp. 1885
Author(s):  
Qiong Yao ◽  
Dan Song ◽  
Xiang Xu ◽  
Kun Zou

Finger vein (FV) biometrics is one of the most promising individual recognition traits, which has the capabilities of uniqueness, anti-forgery, and bio-assay, etc. However, due to the restricts of imaging environments, the acquired FV images are easily degraded to low-contrast, blur, as well as serious noise disturbance. Therefore, how to extract more efficient and robust features from these low-quality FV images, remains to be addressed. In this paper, a novel feature extraction method of FV images is presented, which combines curvature and radon-like features (RLF). First, an enhanced vein pattern image is obtained by calculating the mean curvature of each pixel in the original FV image. Then, a specific implementation of RLF is developed and performed on the previously obtained vein pattern image, which can effectively aggregate the dispersed spatial information around the vein structures, thus highlight vein patterns and suppress spurious non-boundary responses and noises. Finally, a smoother vein structure image is obtained for subsequent matching and verification. Compared with the existing curvature-based recognition methods, the proposed method can not only preserve the inherent vein patterns, but also eliminate most of the pseudo vein information, so as to restore more smoothing and genuine vein structure information. In order to assess the performance of our proposed RLF-based method, we conducted comprehensive experiments on three public FV databases and a self-built FV database (which contains 37,080 samples that derived from 1030 individuals). The experimental results denoted that RLF-based feature extraction method can obtain more complete and continuous vein patterns, as well as better recognition accuracy.


The construction of directionally selective units, and their use in the processing of visual motion, are considered. The zero crossings of ∇ 2 G(x, y) ∗ I(x, y) are located, as in Marr & Hildreth (1980). That is, the image is filtered through centre-surround receptive fields, and the zero values in the output are found. In addition, the time derivative ∂[∇ 2 G(x, y) ∗ l(x, y) ]/∂ t is measured at the zero crossings, and serves to constrain the local direction of motion to within 180°. The direction of motion can be determined in a second stage, for example by combining the local constraints. The second part of the paper suggests a specific model of the information processing by the X and Y cells of the retina and lateral geniculate nucleus, and certain classes of cortical simple cells. A number of psychophysical and neurophysiological predictions are derived from the theory.


Neuron ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 82 (4) ◽  
pp. 887-895 ◽  
Author(s):  
John C. Tuthill ◽  
Aljoscha Nern ◽  
Gerald M. Rubin ◽  
Michael B. Reiser

1997 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 95-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimron Shapiro ◽  
Jon Driver ◽  
Robert Ward ◽  
Robyn E. Sorensen

When people must detect several targets in a very rapid stream of successive visual events at the same location, detection of an initial target induces misses for subsequent targets within a brief period. This attentional blink may serve to prevent interruption of ongoing target processing by temporarily suppressing vision for subsequent stimuli. We examined the level at which the internal blink operates, specifically, whether it prevents early visual processing or prevents quite substantial processing from reaching awareness. Our data support the latter view. We observed priming from missed letter targets, benefiting detection of a subsequent target with the same identity but a different case. In a second study, we observed semantic priming from word targets that were missed during the blink. These results demonstrate that attentional gating within the blink operates only after substantial stimulus processing has already taken place. The results are discussed in terms of two forms of visual representation, namely, types and tokens.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document