A theory of cortical map formation in the visual brain

The cerebral cortex receives multiple afferents from the thalamus that segregate by stimulus modality forming cortical maps for each sense. In vision, the primary visual cortex also maps the multiple dimensions of the stimulus in patterns that vary across species for reasons unknown. Here we introduce a general theory of cortical map formation, which proposes that map diversity emerges from variations in sampling density of sensory space across species. In the theory, increasing afferent sampling density enlarges the cortical domains representing the same visual point allowing the segregation of afferents and cortical targets by additional stimulus dimensions. We illustrate the theory with a computational model that accurately replicates the maps of different species through afferent segregation followed by thalamocortical convergence pruned by visual experience. Because thalamocortical pathways use similar mechanisms for axon sorting and pruning, the theory may extend to other sensory areas of the mammalian brain.

Do Children With Developmental Language Disorder Activate Scene Knowledge to Guide Visual Attention? Effect of Object-Scene Inconsistencies on Gaze Allocation

Our visual environment is highly predictable in terms of where and in which locations objects can be found. Based on visual experience, children extract rules about visual scene configurations, allowing them to generate scene knowledge. Similarly, children extract the linguistic rules from relatively predictable linguistic contexts. It has been proposed that the capacity of extracting rules from both domains might share some underlying cognitive mechanisms. In the present study, we investigated the link between language and scene knowledge development. To do so, we assessed whether preschool children (age range = 5;4–6;6) with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), who present several difficulties in the linguistic domain, are equally attracted to object-scene inconsistencies in a visual free-viewing task in comparison with age-matched children with Typical Language Development (TLD). All children explored visual scenes containing semantic (e.g., soap on a breakfast table), syntactic (e.g., bread on the chair back), or both inconsistencies (e.g., soap on the chair back). Since scene knowledge interacts with image properties (i.e., saliency) to guide gaze allocation during visual exploration from the early stages of development, we also included the objects’ saliency rank in the analysis. The results showed that children with DLD were less attracted to semantic and syntactic inconsistencies than children with TLD. In addition, saliency modulated syntactic effect only in the group of children with TLD. Our findings indicate that children with DLD do not activate scene knowledge to guide visual attention as efficiently as children with TLD, especially at the syntactic level, suggesting a link between scene knowledge and language development.

The Variability of Mental Timeline in Vertical Dimension

People often use concrete spatial terms to represent abstract time. Previous studies have shown that mental timeline (MTL) is represented along a horizontal axis. Studies of the mental timeline have demonstrated that compared with English speakers, Mandarin speakers are more likely to think about time vertically (up-down) than horizontally (left-right/front-back). Prior studies have suggested that MTL in the up and down dimensions originated from temporal-spatial metaphors in language. However, there are still a large number of perceptual experiences in the up and down dimensions, such as visual and sensorimotor experience. Then does the visual experience in daily life affect the MTL in the vertical dimension? This study is aimed to investigate whether visual experience can promote or activate the opposite direction of MTL from implicit and explicit levels. The results showed that when the time information in the task was not prominent, the direction of vertical MTL cannot be affected by ascending or descending perceptual experience. While when the time information was prominent, whether the task was implicit or explicit, compared with the control group, watching the top-down scene significantly increased the top-down direction selection, while in the implicit task, watching the bottom-up scene made the top-down MTL disappear. To the best of our knowledge, our study provides the first evidence that the flexibility of space–time associations in vertical dimension extends beyond explicit and embraces even implicit levels. This study shows that the vertical MTL is activated in certain conditions and could be affected by the visual experience.

Management of Abnormal Visual Developments

When human beings recognize the external world, more than 80% of the information come from visual function and visual system. Normal visual development and normal binocularity are the fundamental of good visual acuity and visual functions. Any abnormal visual experience would cause abnormality, such as refractive error, strabismus, amblyopia and other diseases. The patients with abnormal visual developments were reported to have abnormal, lonely, and other psycho problems. In this chapter, we will describe the normal developmental of visual function, summarize the abnormal developments and the correction or treatment.

Psychology of Dwelling and Visual Appropriations—An Anthropological Application

We find ourselves situated within a world that can be experienced visually, for the first time, in its wholeness. Using conceptual analysis, we intend to show that notions born within the practice of habitation, such as the sense of place, place attachment, and hearth, can help us evaluate the psychological implications of the images of Earth taken from space. We chose a phenomenological approach to human habitation because it allows concepts pertaining to connected and inherently interdisciplinary fields, for instance environmental psychology or human geography, to be reunited under the umbrella of an anthropological interpretation. The sensory and imaginary connotations of the notion of place may be noticed starting from the distinction between space as mathematical abstraction and concrete places being experienced directly. An analysis of the nature of this connection leads to the finding that we actively imagine and reimagine the surrounding world as an unfolding space in which we are constantly attempting to dwell. What is of particular interest for us is the manner in which technologically-mediated visual experience may inspire cognitive representations or may generate profound emotions, such as the attachment to a particular place. Therefore, the value of imagination for the anthropology of habitation is not rendered by its compensatory role, but by its link to ontogenesis. Familiar places, which continue to attract us, are capable of triggering unique imaginary processes, reveries which refer us to the primordial steps of ontogenesis with outmost intensity. The process of subjective appropriation of the world begins with that privileged space of origin specific to each of us, the space which we identify with most intensely. Thus, the psychological impact of the image of Earth from space: we become intensely aware that this planet is our Place within a hostile universe.

On the question of the multimodality of perceptions and its reflection in language

The article focuses on the semantics of the Bulgarian lexeme глух, examined on a wider Slavic, Balkan and Indo-European background. The emphasis is on the phenomenon of verbal synaesthesia, which allows the manifestation of the cross-modal character of many image schemes that gave rise to its semantic structure. The analysis is an opportunity to verify the established models of metaphorical projections from lower to higher modalities with respect to the Bulgarian lexeme глух. The relationship between perception and conceptual structure is being studied with particular interest in contemporary linguistics, so the study of the role of non-visual experience in structuring a semantic system in a language complements the general idea of linguistic synaesthesia and its role in all languages.

Read My Lips: Onscreen Visual Acoustics in Alfred Hitchcock’s Early Movies

This essay will cover some of Alfred Hitchcock’s early silent movies up to and including Blackmail (1929), of which he filmed both a silent and a sound version simultaneously. Hitchcock’s success with sound was directly linked to his training in silent technique. Silent movies actually allowed him to explore how they were capable of sound. This essay will consider how silent movies were able to induce an acoustic experience without the aid of extra-diegetic practices that added live – and sometimes gramophonic – soundtrack to films. What I am interested in is the aural effect of the visual experience of the screen alone. In the early days of cinema, the frame was silently read for all kind of sounds heard in the head of the spectator.

An optimized complex motion prediction approach based on a video synopsis

PurposeThe space-time variants algorithm will not give good results in practical scenarios; when no tubes increase, these techniques will not give the results. It is challenging to reduce the energy of the output synopsis videos. In this paper, a new optimized technique has been implemented that models and covers every frame in the output video.Design/methodology/approachIn the video synopsis, condensing a video to produce a low frame rate (FR) video using their spatial and temporal coefficients is vital in complex environments. Maintaining a database is also feasible and consumes space. In recent years, many algorithms were proposed.FindingsThe main advantage of this proposed technique is that the output frames are selected by the user definitions and stored in low-intensity communication systems and also it gives tremendous support to the user to select desired tubes and thereby stops the criterion in the output video, which can be further suitable for the user's knowledge and creates nonoverlapping tube-oriented synopsis that can provide excellent visual experience.Research limitations/implicationsIn this research paper, four test videos are utilized with complex environments (high-density objects) and show that the proposed technique gives better results when compared to other existing techniques.Originality/valueThe proposed method provides a unique technique in video synopsis for compressing the data without loss.

The Gothic Representations of the City through the Fl?neur in Victorian Literature

The Victorian Gothic moved away from old and conventional themes and spaces of early Gothic novels such as ruined castles and evil villains into more realistic spaces and characters that went hand in hand with the issues of the era. While the conventional Gothic space centered on the castle or other forms of old buildings, the city was an important component in Victorian Gothic imagery. In an era of growing mediation between the city and the urban dwellers, the gothic representations of the urban space in Victorian literature highly depended on the 'eye' of the its fl?neurs, or walkers who see, interpret, and produce the city. The fascination with modes of perceiving and seeing the mystery of the puzzling visual experience are evident in a wide variety of the nineteenth and twentieth-century theories and researches on the urban space. The focus of this paper is to graft some insights into debate on urban visuality and other related tropes that provide a range of perspectives on the field of the visual and perception of the city. Then, drawing from Victorian novels, this paper examines Dickens’s portrayals of urban subjects such as Gothic fl?neurs who produce the city as a Gothic place.