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Choi R, Feldman J, Singh M. Perceptual Biases in the Interpretation of Non-Rigid Shape Transformations from Motion. Vision (Basel) 2024; 8:43. [PMID: 39051229 PMCID: PMC11270375 DOI: 10.3390/vision8030043] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/09/2024] [Revised: 06/25/2024] [Accepted: 06/28/2024] [Indexed: 07/27/2024] Open
Abstract
Most existing research on the perception of 3D shape from motion has focused on rigidly moving objects. However, many natural objects deform non-rigidly, leading to image motion with no rigid interpretation. We investigated potential biases underlying the perception of non-rigid shape interpretations from motion. We presented observers with stimuli that were consistent with two qualitatively different interpretations. Observers were shown a two-part 3D object with the smaller part changing in length dynamically as the whole object rotated back and forth. In two experiments, we studied the misperception (i.e., perceptual reinterpretation) of the non-rigid length change to a part. In Experiment 1, observers misperceived this length change as a part orientation change (i.e., the smaller part was seen as articulating with respect to the larger part). In Experiment 2, the stimuli were similar, except the silhouette of the part was visible in the image. Here, the non-rigid length change was reinterpreted as a rigidly attached part with an "illusory" non-orthogonal horizontal angle relative to the larger part. We developed a model that incorporated this perceptual reinterpretation and could predict observer data. We propose that the visual system may be biased towards part-wise rigid interpretations of non-rigid motion, likely due to the ecological significance of movements of humans and other animals, which are generally constrained to move approximately part-wise rigidly. That is, not all non-rigid deformations are created equal: the visual systems' prior expectations may bias the system to interpret motion in terms of biologically plausible shape transformations.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ryne Choi
- Department of Psychology and Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science (RuCCS), Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ 08854, USA
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Aston S, Denisova K, Hurlbert A, Olkkonen M, Pearce B, Rudd M, Werner A, Xiao B. Exploring the Determinants of Color Perception Using #Thedress and Its Variants: The Role of Spatio-Chromatic Context, Chromatic Illumination, and Material-Light Interaction. Perception 2020; 49:1235-1251. [PMID: 33183137 PMCID: PMC7672784 DOI: 10.1177/0301006620963808] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/02/2020] [Accepted: 08/30/2020] [Indexed: 11/27/2022]
Abstract
The colors that people see depend not only on the surface properties of objects but also on how these properties interact with light as well as on how light reflected from objects interacts with an individual's visual system. Because individual visual systems vary, the same visual stimulus may elicit different perceptions from different individuals. #thedress phenomenon drove home this point: different individuals viewed the same image and reported it to be widely different colors: blue and black versus white and gold. This phenomenon inspired a collection of demonstrations presented at the Vision Sciences Society 2015 Meeting which showed how spatial and temporal manipulations of light spectra affect people's perceptions of material colors and illustrated the variability in individual color perception. The demonstrations also explored the effects of temporal alterations in metameric lights, including Maxwell's Spot, an entoptic phenomenon. Crucially, the demonstrations established that #thedress phenomenon occurs not only for images of the dress but also for the real dress under real light sources of different spectral composition and spatial configurations.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Kristina Denisova
- Columbia University Irving Medical Center, United States; New York State Psychiatric Institute, United States; Teachers College Columbia University, United States
| | | | | | | | | | - Annette Werner
- Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Germany
| | - Bei Xiao
- American University, United States
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Denisova K. Failure to attune to language predicts autism in high risk infants. BRAIN AND LANGUAGE 2019; 194:109-120. [PMID: 31133435 DOI: 10.1016/j.bandl.2019.04.002] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/28/2018] [Revised: 04/10/2019] [Accepted: 04/10/2019] [Indexed: 06/09/2023]
Abstract
Young humans are typically sensitive to evolutionarily important aspects of information in the surrounding environment in a way that makes us thrive. Seeking to probe the putative disruptions of this process in infancy, I examined the statistical character of head movements in 52 9-10 mo-old infants, half at high familial risk (HR) for Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), who underwent an fMRI scan while listening to words spoken with alternating stress patterns on syllables. Relative to low risk (LR) infants, HR infants, in particular those showing the least rapid receptive language progress, had significantly lower noise-to-signal levels and increased symmetry. A comparison of patterns during a native language and a sleep scan revealed the most atypical ordering of signatures on the 3 tasks in a subset of HR infants, suggesting that the biological mechanism of language development is least acquisitive in those HR infants who go on to develop ASD in toddlerhood.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kristina Denisova
- Sackler Institute for Developmental Psychobiology, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, NY 10032, USA; Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, NY 10032, USA; Division of Developmental Neuroscience, New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York, NY 10032, USA.
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Destler N, Singh M, Feldman J. Shape discrimination along morph-spaces. Vision Res 2019; 158:189-199. [PMID: 30878276 DOI: 10.1016/j.visres.2019.03.002] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/14/2018] [Revised: 02/27/2019] [Accepted: 03/08/2019] [Indexed: 11/16/2022]
Abstract
We investigated the dimensions defining mental shape space, by measuring shape discrimination thresholds along "morph-spaces" defined by pairs of shapes. Given any two shapes, one can construct a morph-space by taking weighted averages of their boundary vertices (after normalization), creating a continuum of shapes ranging from the first shape to the second. Previous studies of morphs between highly familiar shape categories (e.g. truck and turkey) have shown elevated discrimination at category boundaries, reflecting a kind of "categorical perception" in shape space. Here, we use this technique to explore the underlying representation of unfamiliar shapes. Subjects were shown two shapes at nearby points along a morph-space, and asked to judge whether they were the same or different, with an adaptive procedure used to estimate discrimination thresholds at each point along the morph-space. We targeted several potentially important categorical distinctions, such one- vs. two-part shapes, two- vs. three-part shapes, changes in symmetry structure, and other potentially important distinctions. Observed discrimination thresholds showed substantial and systematic deviations from uniformity at different points along each shape continuum, meaning that subjects were consistently better at discriminating at certain points along each morph-space than at others. We introduce a shape similarity measure, based on Bayesian skeletal shape representations, which gives a good account of the observed variations in shape sensitivity.
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Affiliation(s)
- Nathan Destler
- Department of Psychology, Center for Cognitive Science, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, United States.
| | - Manish Singh
- Department of Psychology, Center for Cognitive Science, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, United States
| | - Jacob Feldman
- Department of Psychology, Center for Cognitive Science, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, United States
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Abstract
An intrinsic part of seeing objects is seeing how similar or different they are relative to one another. This experience requires that objects be mentally represented in a common format over which such comparisons can be carried out. What is that representational format? Objects could be compared in terms of their superficial features (e.g., degree of pixel-by-pixel overlap), but a more intriguing possibility is that they are compared on the basis of a deeper structure. One especially promising candidate that has enjoyed success in the computer vision literature is the shape skeleton-a geometric transformation that represents objects according to their inferred underlying organization. Despite several hints that shape skeletons are computed in human vision, it remains unclear how much they actually matter for subsequent performance. Here, we explore the possibility that shape skeletons help mediate the ability to extract visual similarity. Observers completed a same/different task in which two shapes could vary either in their skeletal structure (without changing superficial features such as size, orientation, and internal angular separation) or in large surface-level ways (without changing overall skeletal organization). Discrimination was better for skeletally dissimilar shapes: observers had difficulty appreciating even surprisingly large differences when those differences did not reorganize the underlying skeletons. This pattern also generalized beyond line drawings to 3-D volumes whose skeletons were less readily inferable from the shapes' visible contours. These results show how shape skeletons may influence the perception of similarity-and more generally, how they have important consequences for downstream visual processing.
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Inflexible neurobiological signatures precede atypical development in infants at high risk for autism. Sci Rep 2017; 7:11285. [PMID: 28900155 PMCID: PMC5595985 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-017-09028-0] [Citation(s) in RCA: 21] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/29/2017] [Accepted: 07/19/2017] [Indexed: 01/03/2023] Open
Abstract
Variability in neurobiological signatures is ubiquitous in early life but the link to adverse developmental milestones in humans is unknown. We examined how levels of signal and noise in movement signatures during the 1st year of life constrain early development in 71 healthy typically developing infants, either at High or Low familial Risk (HR or LR, respectively) for developing Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). Delays in early learning developmental trajectories in HR infants (validated in an analysis of 1,445 infants from representative infant-sibling studies) were predicted by worse stochastic patterns in their spontaneous head movements as early as 1-2 months after birth, relative to HR infants who showed more rapid developmental progress, as well as relative to all LR infants. While LR 1-2 mo-old infants' movements were significantly different during a language listening task compared to during sleep, HR infants' movements were more similar during both conditions, a striking lack of diversity that reveals context-inflexible experience of ambient information. Contrary to expectation, it is not the level of variability per se that is particularly detrimental in early life. Rather, inflexible sensorimotor systems and/or atypical transition between behavioral states may interfere with the establishment of capacity to extract structure and important cues from sensory input at birth, preceding and contributing to an atypical brain developmental trajectory in toddlerhood.
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Denisova K, Zhao G, Wang Z, Goh S, Huo Y, Peterson BS. Cortical interactions during the resolution of information processing demands in autism spectrum disorders. Brain Behav 2017; 7:e00596. [PMID: 28239517 PMCID: PMC5318360 DOI: 10.1002/brb3.596] [Citation(s) in RCA: 12] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/04/2015] [Revised: 07/27/2016] [Accepted: 09/11/2016] [Indexed: 12/15/2022] Open
Abstract
INTRODUCTION Our flexible and adaptive interactions with the environment are guided by our individual representation of the physical world, estimated through sensation and evaluation of available information against prior knowledge. When linking sensory evidence with higher-level expectations for action, the central nervous system (CNS) in typically developing (TD) individuals relies in part on distributed and interacting cortical regions to communicate neuronal signals flexibly across the brain. Increasing evidence suggests that the balance between levels of signal and noise during information processing may be disrupted in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). METHODS Participants with and without ASD performed a visuospatial interference task while undergoing functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). We empirically estimated parameters characterizing participants' latencies and their subtle fluctuations (noise accumulation) over the 16-min scan. We modeled hemodynamic activation and used seed-based analyses of neural coupling to study dysfunction in interference-specific connectivity in a subset of ASD participants who were nonparametrically matched to TD participants on age, male-to-female ratio, and magnitude of movement during the scan. RESULTS Stochastic patterns of response fluctuations reveal significantly higher noise-to-signal levels and a more random and noisy structure in ASD versus TD participants, and in particular ASD adults who have the greatest clinical autistic deficits. While individuals with ASD show an overall weaker modulation of interference-specific functional connectivity relative to TD individuals, in particular between the seeds of Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC) and Inferior Parietal Sulcus (IPS) and the rest of the brain, we found that in ASD, higher uncertainty during the task is linked to increased interference-specific coupling between bilateral anterior insula and prefrontal cortex. CONCLUSIONS Subtle and informative differences in the structure of experiencing information exist between ASD and TD individuals. Our findings reveal in ASD an atypical capacity to apply previously perceived information in a manner optimal for adaptive functioning, plausibly revealing suboptimal message-passing across the CNS.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kristina Denisova
- Department of Psychiatry Center for Developmental Neuropsychiatry Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons New York NY USA; Division of Developmental Neuroscience New York State Psychiatric Institute New York NY USA; Sackler Institute for Developmental Psychobiology Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons New York NY USA
| | - Guihu Zhao
- Department of Psychiatry Center for Developmental Neuropsychiatry Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons New York NY USA; School of Information Science and Engineering Central South University Changsha China
| | - Zhishun Wang
- Department of Psychiatry Center for Developmental Neuropsychiatry Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons New York NY USA
| | - Suzanne Goh
- Department of Psychiatry Center for Developmental Neuropsychiatry Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons New York NY USA
| | - Yuankai Huo
- Department of Psychiatry Center for Developmental Neuropsychiatry Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons New York NY USA
| | - Bradley S Peterson
- Children's Hospital Los Angeles Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California Los Angeles CA USA
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Visual perception of shape altered by inferred causal history. Sci Rep 2016; 6:36245. [PMID: 27824094 PMCID: PMC5099969 DOI: 10.1038/srep36245] [Citation(s) in RCA: 23] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/12/2016] [Accepted: 10/07/2016] [Indexed: 12/04/2022] Open
Abstract
One of the main functions of vision is to represent object shape. Most theories of shape perception focus exclusively on geometrical computations (e.g., curvatures, symmetries, axis structure). Here, however, we find that shape representations are also profoundly influenced by an object’s causal origins: the processes in its past that formed it. Observers placed dots on objects to report their perceived symmetry axes. When objects appeared ‘complete’—created entirely by a single generative process—responses closely approximated the object’s geometrical axes. However, when objects appeared ‘bitten’—as if parts had been removed by a distinct causal process—the responses deviated significantly from the geometrical axes, as if the bitten regions were suppressed from the computation of symmetry. This suppression of bitten regions was also found when observers were not asked about symmetry axes but about the perceived front and back of objects. The findings suggest that visual shape representations are more sophisticated than previously appreciated. Objects are not only parsed according to what features they have, but also to how or why they have those features.
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Schmidt F, Fleming RW. Visual perception of complex shape-transforming processes. Cogn Psychol 2016; 90:48-70. [PMID: 27631704 DOI: 10.1016/j.cogpsych.2016.08.002] [Citation(s) in RCA: 12] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/05/2016] [Revised: 07/06/2016] [Accepted: 08/26/2016] [Indexed: 12/22/2022]
Abstract
Morphogenesis-or the origin of complex natural form-has long fascinated researchers from practically every branch of science. However, we know practically nothing about how we perceive and understand such processes. Here, we measured how observers visually infer shape-transforming processes. Participants viewed pairs of objects ('before' and 'after' a transformation) and identified points that corresponded across the transformation. This allowed us to map out in spatial detail how perceived shape and space were affected by the transformations. Participants' responses were strikingly accurate and mutually consistent for a wide range of non-rigid transformations including complex growth-like processes. A zero-free-parameter model based on matching and interpolating/extrapolating the positions of high-salience contour features predicts the data surprisingly well, suggesting observers infer spatial correspondences relative to key landmarks. Together, our findings reveal the operation of specific perceptual organization processes that make us remarkably adept at identifying correspondences across complex shape-transforming processes by using salient object features. We suggest that these abilities, which allow us to parse and interpret the causally significant features of shapes, are invaluable for many tasks that involve 'making sense' of shape.
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Jäkel F, Singh M, Wichmann FA, Herzog MH. An overview of quantitative approaches in Gestalt perception. Vision Res 2016; 126:3-8. [PMID: 27353224 DOI: 10.1016/j.visres.2016.06.004] [Citation(s) in RCA: 13] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/14/2016] [Revised: 06/22/2016] [Accepted: 06/22/2016] [Indexed: 10/21/2022]
Abstract
Gestalt psychology is often criticized as lacking quantitative measurements and precise mathematical models. While this is true of the early Gestalt school, today there are many quantitative approaches in Gestalt perception and the special issue of Vision Research "Quantitative Approaches in Gestalt Perception" showcases the current state-of-the-art. In this article we give an overview of these current approaches. For example, ideal observer models are one of the standard quantitative tools in vision research and there is a clear trend to try and apply this tool to Gestalt perception and thereby integrate Gestalt perception into mainstream vision research. More generally, Bayesian models, long popular in other areas of vision research, are increasingly being employed to model perceptual grouping as well. Thus, although experimental and theoretical approaches to Gestalt perception remain quite diverse, we are hopeful that these quantitative trends will pave the way for a unified theory.
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Affiliation(s)
- Frank Jäkel
- Institute of Cognitive Science, University of Osnabrück, Germany.
| | - Manish Singh
- Department of Psychology and Center for Cognitive Science, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, United States
| | - Felix A Wichmann
- Neural Information Processing Group, Faculty of Science, and Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Tübingen, University of Tübingen, Germany; Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Empirical Inference Department, Tübingen, Germany
| | - Michael H Herzog
- Laboratory of Psychophysics, Brain Mind Institute, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland
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Zhao G, Denisova K, Sehatpour P, Long J, Gui W, Qiao J, Javitt DC, Wang Z. Fractal Dimension Analysis of Subcortical Gray Matter Structures in Schizophrenia. PLoS One 2016; 11:e0155415. [PMID: 27176232 PMCID: PMC4866699 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0155415] [Citation(s) in RCA: 22] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/01/2015] [Accepted: 04/28/2016] [Indexed: 12/13/2022] Open
Abstract
A failure of adaptive inference—misinterpreting available sensory information for appropriate perception and action—is at the heart of clinical manifestations of schizophrenia, implicating key subcortical structures in the brain including the hippocampus. We used high-resolution, three-dimensional (3D) fractal geometry analysis to study subtle and potentially biologically relevant structural alterations (in the geometry of protrusions, gyri and indentations, sulci) in subcortical gray matter (GM) in patients with schizophrenia relative to healthy individuals. In particular, we focus on utilizing Fractal Dimension (FD), a compact shape descriptor that can be computed using inputs with irregular (i.e., not necessarily smooth) surfaces in order to quantify complexity (of geometrical properties and configurations of structures across spatial scales) of subcortical GM in this disorder. Probabilistic (entropy-based) information FD was computed based on the box-counting approach for each of the seven subcortical structures, bilaterally, as well as the brainstem from high-resolution magnetic resonance (MR) images in chronic patients with schizophrenia (n = 19) and age-matched healthy controls (n = 19) (age ranges: patients, 22.7–54.3 and healthy controls, 24.9–51.6 years old). We found a significant reduction of FD in the left hippocampus (median: 2.1460, range: 2.07–2.18 vs. median: 2.1730, range: 2.15–2.23, p<0.001; Cohen’s effect size, U3 = 0.8158 (95% Confidence Intervals, CIs: 0.6316, 1.0)), the right hippocampus (median: 2.1430, range: 2.05–2.19 vs. median: 2.1760, range: 2.12–2.21, p = 0.004; U3 = 0.8421 (CIs: 0.5263, 1)), as well as left thalamus (median: 2.4230, range: 2.40–2.44, p = 0.005; U3 = 0.7895 (CIs: 0.5789, 0.9473)) in schizophrenia patients, relative to healthy individuals. Our findings provide in-vivo quantitative evidence for reduced surface complexity of hippocampus, with reduced FD indicating a less complex, less regular GM surface detected in schizophrenia.
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Affiliation(s)
- Guihu Zhao
- School of Information Science and Engineering, Central South University, Changsha 410083, China
- Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, NY 10032, United States of America
| | - Kristina Denisova
- Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, NY 10032, United States of America
- Sackler Institute for Psychobiology, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, NY 10032, United States of America
- Division of Developmental Neuroscience, New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York, NY 10032, United States of America
| | - Pejman Sehatpour
- Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, NY 10032, United States of America
- Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research, Orangeburg, NY 10962, United States of America
| | - Jun Long
- School of Information Science and Engineering, Central South University, Changsha 410083, China
- * E-mail: ; ; (ZW); (JL)
| | - Weihua Gui
- School of Information Science and Engineering, Central South University, Changsha 410083, China
| | - Jianping Qiao
- College of Physics and Electronics, Shandong Normal University, Jinan 250014, China
| | - Daniel C. Javitt
- Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, NY 10032, United States of America
- Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research, Orangeburg, NY 10962, United States of America
| | - Zhishun Wang
- Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, NY 10032, United States of America
- * E-mail: ; ; (ZW); (JL)
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