Kestutis Kveraga and Moshe Bar (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780262027854
- eISBN:
- 9780262319898
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262027854.001.0001
- Subject:
- Neuroscience, Sensory and Motor Systems
For many years, researchers have studied visual recognition with objects—single, clean, clear, and isolated objects, presented to subjects at the center of the screen. In our real environment, ...
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For many years, researchers have studied visual recognition with objects—single, clean, clear, and isolated objects, presented to subjects at the center of the screen. In our real environment, however, objects do not appear so neatly. Our visual world is a stimulating scenery mess; fragments, colors, occlusions, motions, eye movements, context, and distraction all affect perception. This book addresses the visual cognition of scenes from neuroimaging, psychology, modeling, electrophysiology, and computer vision perspectives. The text builds on past research and accepts the challenge of applying what we have learned from the study of object recognition to the visual cognition of scenes. Chapters consider issues of spatial vision, context, rapid perception, emotion, attention, memory, and the neural mechanisms underlying scene representation.Less
For many years, researchers have studied visual recognition with objects—single, clean, clear, and isolated objects, presented to subjects at the center of the screen. In our real environment, however, objects do not appear so neatly. Our visual world is a stimulating scenery mess; fragments, colors, occlusions, motions, eye movements, context, and distraction all affect perception. This book addresses the visual cognition of scenes from neuroimaging, psychology, modeling, electrophysiology, and computer vision perspectives. The text builds on past research and accepts the challenge of applying what we have learned from the study of object recognition to the visual cognition of scenes. Chapters consider issues of spatial vision, context, rapid perception, emotion, attention, memory, and the neural mechanisms underlying scene representation.
John E. Dowling and Jr. Joseph L. Dowling
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780262034616
- eISBN:
- 9780262333566
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262034616.001.0001
- Subject:
- Neuroscience, Sensory and Motor Systems
The visual system is our best understood sensory system, and for humans vision is paramount. Surveys indicate people fear blindness more than any other sensory disability. Most visual problems ...
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The visual system is our best understood sensory system, and for humans vision is paramount. Surveys indicate people fear blindness more than any other sensory disability. Most visual problems originate in the eye and we put most emphasis there, starting with the cornea and lens, which provide a window into the eye and also focus images on the light-sensitive photoreceptors that line the back of the eye. How the photoreceptor cells capture light is described, as well as the primary steps in vision that occur in the photoreceptors. How these early steps in vision can go awry, degrade vision and be treated are discussed. But the eye contains more than photoreceptors. Attached to the photoreceptors is a piece of the brain, the retina, that consists of four major classes of neurons which form a complex network that begins the neural processing of visual information. Two levels of analysis occur in the retina such that the output neurons of the retina, the ganglion cells, send at least a dozen messages to higher brain centers. Much attention is focused on how the retina processes visual signals and two major eye diseases that affect retinal function are described. From the eye, visual information goes to higher brain centers including the cortex where we perceive objects, and as many as thirty cortical areas are involved in this process. Abnormalities in these areas can compromise vision in interesting and surprising ways. Finally, a brief overview of how our understanding of vision has unfolded is presented along with a glimpse of the future.Less
The visual system is our best understood sensory system, and for humans vision is paramount. Surveys indicate people fear blindness more than any other sensory disability. Most visual problems originate in the eye and we put most emphasis there, starting with the cornea and lens, which provide a window into the eye and also focus images on the light-sensitive photoreceptors that line the back of the eye. How the photoreceptor cells capture light is described, as well as the primary steps in vision that occur in the photoreceptors. How these early steps in vision can go awry, degrade vision and be treated are discussed. But the eye contains more than photoreceptors. Attached to the photoreceptors is a piece of the brain, the retina, that consists of four major classes of neurons which form a complex network that begins the neural processing of visual information. Two levels of analysis occur in the retina such that the output neurons of the retina, the ganglion cells, send at least a dozen messages to higher brain centers. Much attention is focused on how the retina processes visual signals and two major eye diseases that affect retinal function are described. From the eye, visual information goes to higher brain centers including the cortex where we perceive objects, and as many as thirty cortical areas are involved in this process. Abnormalities in these areas can compromise vision in interesting and surprising ways. Finally, a brief overview of how our understanding of vision has unfolded is presented along with a glimpse of the future.
