Early Electrophysiological Markers of Navigational Affordances in Scenes

Scene perception and spatial navigation are interdependent cognitive functions, and there is increasing evidence that cortical areas that process perceptual scene properties also carry information about the potential for navigation in the environment (navigational affordances). However, the temporal stages by which visual information is transformed into navigationally relevant information are not yet known. We hypothesized that navigational affordances are encoded during perceptual processing and therefore should modulate early visually evoked ERPs, especially the scene-selective P2 component. To test this idea, we recorded ERPs from participants while they passively viewed computer-generated room scenes matched in visual complexity. By simply changing the number of doors (no doors, 1 door, 2 doors, 3 doors), we were able to systematically vary the number of pathways that afford movement in the local environment, while keeping the overall size and shape of the environment constant. We found that rooms with no doors evoked a higher P2 response than rooms with three doors, consistent with prior research reporting higher P2 amplitude to closed relative to open scenes. Moreover, we found P2 amplitude scaled linearly with the number of doors in the scenes. Navigability effects on the ERP waveform were also observed in a multivariate analysis, which showed significant decoding of the number of doors and their location at earlier time windows. Together, our results suggest that navigational affordances are represented in the early stages of scene perception. This complements research showing that the occipital place area automatically encodes the structure of navigable space and strengthens the link between scene perception and navigation.

When You Do Not Get the Whole Picture: Scene Perception After Occipital Cortex Lesions

Background: Occipital cortex lesions (OCLs) typically result in visual field defects (VFDs) contralateral to the damage. VFDs are usually mapped with perimetry involving the detection of point targets. This, however, ignores the important role of integration of visual information across locations in many tasks of everyday life. Here, we ask whether standard perimetry can fully characterize the consequences of OCLs. We compare performance on a rapid scene discrimination task of OCL participants and healthy observers with simulated VFDs. While the healthy observers will only suffer the loss of part of the visual scene, the damage in the OCL participants may further compromise global visual processing.Methods: VFDs were mapped with Humphrey perimetry, and participants performed two rapid scene discrimination tasks. In healthy participants, the VFDs were simulated with hemi- and quadrant occlusions. Additionally, the GIST model, a computational model of scene recognition, was used to make individual predictions based on the VFDs.Results: The GIST model was able to predict the performance of controls regarding the effects of the local occlusion. Using the individual predictions of the GIST model, we can determine that the variability between the OCL participants is much larger than the extent of the VFD could account for. The OCL participants can further be categorized as performing worse, the same, or better as their VFD would predict.Conclusions: While in healthy observers the extent of the simulated occlusion accounts for their performance loss, the OCL participants’ performance is not fully determined by the extent or shape of their VFD as measured with Humphrey perimetry. While some OCL participants are indeed only limited by the local occlusion of the scene, for others, the lesions compromised the visual network in a more global and disruptive way. Yet one outperformed a healthy observer, suggesting a possible adaptation to the VFD. Preliminary analysis of neuroimaging data suggests that damage to the lateral geniculate nucleus and corpus callosum might be associated with the larger disruption of rapid scene discrimination. We believe our approach offers a useful behavioral tool for investigating why similar VFDs can produce widely differing limitations in everyday life.

Key Technologies and Discrete Dynamic Modeling Analysis of Online Travel Planning System Based on Big Data Scenario Aware Service

The key technology of online travel recommendation system has been widely concerned by many Internet experts. This paper studies and designs a scenario aware service model in online travel planning system and proposes an online travel planning recommendation model which integrates collaborative filtering and clustering personalized recommendation algorithm. At the same time, the algorithm performance test method and model evaluation index are given. The results show that CTTCF algorithm can find more neighbor users than UCF algorithm, and the smaller the search space is, the more significant the advantage is. The number of neighbors is 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25, respectively, and the corresponding average absolute error values are about 0.815, 0.785, 0.765, 0.758, and 0.755, respectively. The scores of the six emotional travel itinerary recommendation schemes are all higher than 142 points. Only the two schemes have no obvious rendering effect. The proposed online travel itinerary planning scheme has potential value and important significance in the application of follow-up recommendation system. It solves the problem of low scene perception satisfaction in the key technologies of online tourism planning system.

Reunification of Object and View-Center Background Information in the Primate Medial Temporal Lobe

Recent work has shown that the medial temporal lobe (MTL), including the hippocampus (HPC) and its surrounding limbic cortices, plays a role in scene perception in addition to episodic memory. The two basic factors of scene perception are the object (“what”) and location (“where”). In this review, we first summarize the anatomical knowledge related to visual inputs to the MTL and physiological studies examining object-related information processed along the ventral pathway briefly. Thereafter, we discuss the space-related information, the processing of which was unclear, presumably because of its multiple aspects and a lack of appropriate task paradigm in contrast to object-related information. Based on recent electrophysiological studies using non-human primates and the existing literature, we proposed the “reunification theory,” which explains brain mechanisms which construct object-location signals at each gaze. In this reunification theory, the ventral pathway signals a large-scale background image of the retina at each gaze position. This view-center background signal reflects the first person’s perspective and specifies the allocentric location in the environment by similarity matching between images. The spatially invariant object signal and view-center background signal, both of which are derived from the same retinal image, are integrated again (i.e., reunification) along the ventral pathway-MTL stream, particularly in the perirhinal cortex. The conjunctive signal, which represents a particular object at a particular location, may play a role in scene perception in the HPC as a key constituent element of an entire scene.

Architectural Styles as Subordinate Scene Categories

How do the brains of experts and non-experts represent entry-level and subordinate-level categories of buildings and places? In the study reviewed in this chapter, the authors measured the brain activity of architecture and psychology students while they viewed images of buildings of different architectural styles as well as general scenes. From functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) patterns, they were able to decode which architectural style participants viewed. Despite finding a strong behavioral expertise effect for architectural styles between the two groups of participants, the authors could not find any differences in brain activity. Surprisingly, they found that the fusiform face area, which is typically not involved in scene perception, was tightly linked with scene-selective brain regions for the decoding of architectural styles but not for entry-level scenes categories.

Innovation of the director's vocabulario of Oskaras Korshunovas

The purpose of the article is to reveal the peculiarities of the theatrical direction of O. Korsunovas and analyze the innovation of his director's vocabulary. Methodology. Comparative and structural methods were applied, which contributed to the identification of the originality and diversity of innovative directorial vocabulary; the method of art history analysis, the typological-structural method, and the method of artistic-compositional analysis of stage works, thanks to which the director's "toolbox" has been studied and structured, etc. Scientific novelty. The directorial activity of Oskaras Koršunovas is investigated in the context of the leading strategies of modern European theater; based on the art historical analysis of the performances "There to be here", "Old" by D. Kharms, "Hello Sonya, New Year" by A. Vvedensky, "P.S. case OK "S. Parulskis," Roberto Zucco "B.-M. Colts, “Hamlet” by W. Shakespeare and others, the innovative ways of representation applied by the director were revealed and analyzed; the characteristic features of the director's vocabulary were determined and it was proved that it is an open and dynamic system that develops under the influence of urgent problems of modern society; previously unknown factual material was introduced into scientific circulation. Conclusions. The art of directing by O. Korsunovas is one of the most striking examples of contemporary theater, which deals with the problems of a modern person, and the specificity of its content and form emphasizes the crisis of representation of the late 20th - early 21st centuries, manifests itself through deep changes in relation to action, feelings, scene perception, fragmentation, the crisis of bodily mediation and invariant supports of representation, both at the level of setting and at the level of reception. Directing by O. Korsunovas is distinguished by a fundamental innovation of views, a desire to destroy the ideological, artistic, and methodological limitations of theatrical direction, a unique interpretation of classical plays as modern ones, with an emphasis on contemporary moments, an experimental development on the basis of a theatrical laboratory of unique metaphor and imagery. The research revealed that the characteristic features of O. Korsunovas' directorial vocabulary are: application of the principle of deformation, contrast, and transformation, which take the form of a tragic grotesque; coding in elements of presentation of principles related to the specifics of drama; using the subject as an abstract construction; the use of the chorus - an element of classical Greek theater - in the performances of works of modern drama, etc.

Perception of the Potential for Interaction in Social Scenes

In urban environments, humans often encounter other people that may engage one in interaction. How do humans perceive such invitations to interact at a glance? We briefly presented participants with pictures of actors carrying out one of 11 behaviors (e.g., waving or looking at a phone) at four camera-actor distances. Participants were asked to describe what they might do in such a situation, how they decided, and what stood out most in the photograph. In addition, participants rated how likely they deemed interaction to take place. Participants formulated clear responses about how they might act. We show convincingly that what participants would do depended on the depicted behavior, but not the camera-actor distance. The likeliness to interact ratings depended both on the depicted behavior and the camera-actor distance. We conclude that humans perceive the “gist” of photographs and that various aspects of the actor, action, and context depicted in photographs are subjectively available at a glance. Our conclusions are discussed in the context of scene perception, social robotics, and intercultural differences.

Unveiling functions of the visual cortex using task-specific deep neural networks

The human visual cortex enables visual perception through a cascade of hierarchical computations in cortical regions with distinct functionalities. Here, we introduce an AI-driven approach to discover the functional mapping of the visual cortex. We related human brain responses to scene images measured with functional MRI (fMRI) systematically to a diverse set of deep neural networks (DNNs) optimized to perform different scene perception tasks. We found a structured mapping between DNN tasks and brain regions along the ventral and dorsal visual streams. Low-level visual tasks mapped onto early brain regions, 3-dimensional scene perception tasks mapped onto the dorsal stream, and semantic tasks mapped onto the ventral stream. This mapping was of high fidelity, with more than 60% of the explainable variance in nine key regions being explained. Together, our results provide a novel functional mapping of the human visual cortex and demonstrate the power of the computational approach.

Change not State: Perceptual coupling in multistable displays reflects transient bias induced by perceptual change

We investigated how changes in dynamic spatial context influence visual perception. Specifically, we reexamined the perceptual coupling phenomenon when two multistable displays viewed simultaneously tend to be in the same dominant state and switch in accord. Current models assume this interaction reflecting mutual bias produced by a dominant perceptual state. In contrast, we demonstrate that influence of spatial context is strongest when perception changes. First, we replicated earlier work using bistable kinetic-depth effect displays, then extended it by employing asynchronous presentation to show that perceptual coupling cannot be accounted for by the static context provided by perceptually dominant states. Next, we demonstrated that perceptual coupling reflects transient bias induced by perceptual change, both in ambiguous and disambiguated displays. We used a hierarchical Bayesian model to characterize its timing, demonstrating that the transient bias is induced 50–70 ms after the exogenous trigger event and decays within ~200–300 ms. Both endogenous and exogenous switches led to quantitatively and qualitatively similar perceptual consequences, activating similar perceptual reevaluation mechanisms within a spatial surround. We explain how they can be understood within a transient selective visual attention framework or using local lateral connections within sensory representations. We suggest that observed perceptual effects reflect general mechanisms of perceptual inference for dynamic visual scene perception.