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Yoo SA, Martinez-Trujillo JC, Treue S, Tsotsos JK, Fallah M. Attention to visual motion suppresses neuronal and behavioral sensitivity in nearby feature space. BMC Biol 2022; 20:220. [PMID: 36199136 PMCID: PMC9535987 DOI: 10.1186/s12915-022-01428-7] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/16/2021] [Accepted: 09/30/2022] [Indexed: 11/17/2022] Open
Abstract
Background Feature-based attention prioritizes the processing of the attended feature while strongly suppressing the processing of nearby ones. This creates a non-linearity or “attentional suppressive surround” predicted by the Selective Tuning model of visual attention. However, previously reported effects of feature-based attention on neuronal responses are linear, e.g., feature-similarity gain. Here, we investigated this apparent contradiction by neurophysiological and psychophysical approaches. Results Responses of motion direction-selective neurons in area MT/MST of monkeys were recorded during a motion task. When attention was allocated to a stimulus moving in the neurons’ preferred direction, response tuning curves showed its minimum for directions 60–90° away from the preferred direction, an attentional suppressive surround. This effect was modeled via the interaction of two Gaussian fields representing excitatory narrowly tuned and inhibitory widely tuned inputs into a neuron, with feature-based attention predominantly increasing the gain of inhibitory inputs. We further showed using a motion repulsion paradigm in humans that feature-based attention produces a similar non-linearity on motion discrimination performance. Conclusions Our results link the gain modulation of neuronal inputs and tuning curves examined through the feature-similarity gain lens to the attentional impact on neural population responses predicted by the Selective Tuning model, providing a unified framework for the documented effects of feature-based attention on neuronal responses and behavior. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12915-022-01428-7.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sang-Ah Yoo
- Department of Psychology, York University, Toronto, ON, M3J 1P3, Canada. .,Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, York University, Toronto, ON, M3J 1P3, Canada. .,Centre for Vision Research, York University, Toronto, ON, M3J 1P3, Canada.
| | - Julio C Martinez-Trujillo
- Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, and Psychiatry, Western University, London, ON, N6A 5B7, Canada. .,Cognitive Neurophysiology Laboratory, Robarts Research Institute, Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry, Western University, London, ON, N6A 5B7, Canada.
| | - Stefan Treue
- Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, German Primate Centre - Leibniz Institute for Primate Research, 37077, Goettingen, Germany.,Faculty for Biology and Psychology, University of Goettingen, 37073, Goettingen, Germany.,Leibniz ScienceCampus Primate Cognition, 37077, Goettingen, Germany.,Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, 37077, Goettingen, Germany
| | - John K Tsotsos
- Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, York University, Toronto, ON, M3J 1P3, Canada.,Centre for Vision Research, York University, Toronto, ON, M3J 1P3, Canada.,Vision: Science to Application, York University, Toronto, ON, M3J 1P3, Canada.,Center for Innovation and Computing at Lassonde, York University, Toronto, ON, M3J 1P3, Canada
| | - Mazyar Fallah
- Department of Psychology, York University, Toronto, ON, M3J 1P3, Canada.,Centre for Vision Research, York University, Toronto, ON, M3J 1P3, Canada.,Vision: Science to Application, York University, Toronto, ON, M3J 1P3, Canada.,School of Kinesiology and Health Science, York University, Toronto, ON, M3J 1P3, Canada.,Department of Human Health and Nutritional Sciences, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON, N1G 2W1, Canada
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Karim AKMR, Proulx MJ, de Sousa AA, Likova LT. Do we enjoy what we sense and perceive? A dissociation between aesthetic appreciation and basic perception of environmental objects or events. COGNITIVE, AFFECTIVE & BEHAVIORAL NEUROSCIENCE 2022; 22:904-951. [PMID: 35589909 PMCID: PMC10159614 DOI: 10.3758/s13415-022-01004-0] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 03/27/2022] [Indexed: 05/06/2023]
Abstract
This integrative review rearticulates the notion of human aesthetics by critically appraising the conventional definitions, offerring a new, more comprehensive definition, and identifying the fundamental components associated with it. It intends to advance holistic understanding of the notion by differentiating aesthetic perception from basic perceptual recognition, and by characterizing these concepts from the perspective of information processing in both visual and nonvisual modalities. To this end, we analyze the dissociative nature of information processing in the brain, introducing a novel local-global integrative model that differentiates aesthetic processing from basic perceptual processing. This model builds on the current state of the art in visual aesthetics as well as newer propositions about nonvisual aesthetics. This model comprises two analytic channels: aesthetics-only channel and perception-to-aesthetics channel. The aesthetics-only channel primarily involves restricted local processing for quality or richness (e.g., attractiveness, beauty/prettiness, elegance, sublimeness, catchiness, hedonic value) analysis, whereas the perception-to-aesthetics channel involves global/extended local processing for basic feature analysis, followed by restricted local processing for quality or richness analysis. We contend that aesthetic processing operates independently of basic perceptual processing, but not independently of cognitive processing. We further conjecture that there might be a common faculty, labeled as aesthetic cognition faculty, in the human brain for all sensory aesthetics albeit other parts of the brain can also be activated because of basic sensory processing prior to aesthetic processing, particularly during the operation of the second channel. This generalized model can account not only for simple and pure aesthetic experiences but for partial and complex aesthetic experiences as well.
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Affiliation(s)
- A K M Rezaul Karim
- Department of Psychology, University of Dhaka, Dhaka, 1000, Bangladesh.
- Envision Research Institute, 610 N. Main St., Wichita, KS, USA.
- The Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute, 2318 Fillmore St., San Francisco, CA, USA.
| | | | | | - Lora T Likova
- The Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute, 2318 Fillmore St., San Francisco, CA, USA
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3
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Falconbridge M, Hewitt K, Haille J, Badcock DR, Edwards M. The induced motion effect is a high-level visual phenomenon: Psychophysical evidence. Iperception 2022; 13:20416695221118111. [PMID: 36092511 PMCID: PMC9459461 DOI: 10.1177/20416695221118111] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/18/2021] [Accepted: 07/20/2022] [Indexed: 11/16/2022] Open
Abstract
Induced motion is the illusory motion of a target away from the direction of motion of the unattended background. If it is a result of assigning background motion to self-motion and judging target motion relative to the scene as suggested by the flow parsing hypothesis then the effect must be mediated in higher levels of the visual motion pathway where self-motion is assessed. We provide evidence for a high-level mechanism in two broad ways. Firstly, we show that the effect is insensitive to a set of low-level spatial aspects of the scene, namely, the spatial arrangement, the spatial frequency content and the orientation content of the background relative to the target. Secondly, we show that the effect is the same whether the target and background are composed of the same kind of local elements-one-dimensional (1D) or two-dimensional (2D)-or one is composed of one, and the other composed of the other. The latter finding is significant because 1D and 2D local elements are integrated by two different mechanisms so the induced motion effect is likely to be mediated in a visual motion processing area that follows the two separate integration mechanisms. Area medial superior temporal in monkeys and the equivalent in humans is suggested as a viable site. We present a simple flow-parsing-inspired model and demonstrate a good fit to our data and to data from a previous induced motion study.
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Maloney RT, Clifford CWG, Mareschal I. Directional Limits on Motion Transparency Assessed Through Colour-Motion Binding. Perception 2017; 47:254-275. [PMID: 29228853 DOI: 10.1177/0301006617745010] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/16/2022]
Abstract
Motion-defined transparency is the perception of two or more distinct moving surfaces at the same retinal location. We explored the limits of motion transparency using superimposed surfaces of randomly positioned dots defined by differences in motion direction and colour. In one experiment, dots were red or green and we varied the proportion of dots of a single colour that moved in a single direction ('colour-motion coherence') and measured the threshold direction difference for discriminating between two directions. When colour-motion coherences were high (e.g., 90% of red dots moving in one direction), a smaller direction difference was required to correctly bind colour with direction than at low coherences. In another experiment, we varied the direction difference between the surfaces and measured the threshold colour-motion coherence required to discriminate between them. Generally, colour-motion coherence thresholds decreased with increasing direction differences, stabilising at direction differences around 45°. Different stimulus durations were compared, and thresholds were higher at the shortest (150 ms) compared with the longest (1,000 ms) duration. These results highlight different yet interrelated aspects of the task and the fundamental limits of the mechanisms involved: the resolution of narrowly separated directions in motion processing and the local sampling of dot colours from each surface.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ryan T Maloney
- School of Psychology, and Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Vision Science, The University of Sydney, NSW, Australia; School of Psychology, UNSW Sydney, NSW, Australia; Department of Psychology, The 8748 University of York , UK
| | - Colin W G Clifford
- School of Psychology, UNSW Sydney, NSW, Australia; School of Psychology, and Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Vision Science, The University of Sydney, NSW, Australia
| | - Isabelle Mareschal
- School of Psychology, and Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Vision Science, The University of Sydney, NSW, Australia; Experimental Psychology, 153399 School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, Queen Mary University of London , UK
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5
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Individual differences in context-dependent effects reveal common mechanisms underlying the direction aftereffect and direction repulsion. Vision Res 2017; 141:109-116. [DOI: 10.1016/j.visres.2016.08.009] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/01/2016] [Revised: 08/10/2016] [Accepted: 08/14/2016] [Indexed: 11/19/2022]
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Perry CJ, Fallah M. Feature integration and object representations along the dorsal stream visual hierarchy. Front Comput Neurosci 2014; 8:84. [PMID: 25140147 PMCID: PMC4122209 DOI: 10.3389/fncom.2014.00084] [Citation(s) in RCA: 37] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/18/2014] [Accepted: 07/16/2014] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
The visual system is split into two processing streams: a ventral stream that receives color and form information and a dorsal stream that receives motion information. Each stream processes that information hierarchically, with each stage building upon the previous. In the ventral stream this leads to the formation of object representations that ultimately allow for object recognition regardless of changes in the surrounding environment. In the dorsal stream, this hierarchical processing has classically been thought to lead to the computation of complex motion in three dimensions. However, there is evidence to suggest that there is integration of both dorsal and ventral stream information into motion computation processes, giving rise to intermediate object representations, which facilitate object selection and decision making mechanisms in the dorsal stream. First we review the hierarchical processing of motion along the dorsal stream and the building up of object representations along the ventral stream. Then we discuss recent work on the integration of ventral and dorsal stream features that lead to intermediate object representations in the dorsal stream. Finally we propose a framework describing how and at what stage different features are integrated into dorsal visual stream object representations. Determining the integration of features along the dorsal stream is necessary to understand not only how the dorsal stream builds up an object representation but also which computations are performed on object representations instead of local features.
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Affiliation(s)
- Carolyn Jeane Perry
- Visual Perception and Attention Laboratory, School of Kinesiology and Health Science, York University Toronto, ON, Canada ; Centre for Vision Research, York University Toronto, ON, Canada
| | - Mazyar Fallah
- Visual Perception and Attention Laboratory, School of Kinesiology and Health Science, York University Toronto, ON, Canada ; Centre for Vision Research, York University Toronto, ON, Canada ; Departments of Biology and Psychology, York University Toronto, ON, Canada ; Canadian Action and Perception Network, York University Toronto, ON, Canada
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Perry CJ, Fallah M. Color improves speed of processing but not perception in a motion illusion. Front Psychol 2012; 3:92. [PMID: 22479255 PMCID: PMC3314888 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00092] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/15/2011] [Accepted: 03/13/2012] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
When two superimposed surfaces of dots move in different directions, the perceived directions are shifted away from each other. This perceptual illusion has been termed direction repulsion and is thought to be due to mutual inhibition between the representations of the two directions. It has further been shown that a speed difference between the two surfaces attenuates direction repulsion. As speed and direction are both necessary components of representing motion, the reduction in direction repulsion can be attributed to the additional motion information strengthening the representations of the two directions and thus reducing the mutual inhibition. We tested whether bottom-up attention and top-down task demands, in the form of color differences between the two surfaces, would also enhance motion processing, reducing direction repulsion. We found that the addition of color differences did not improve direction discrimination and reduce direction repulsion. However, we did find that adding a color difference improved performance on the task. We hypothesized that the performance differences were due to the limited presentation time of the stimuli. We tested this in a follow-up experiment where we varied the time of presentation to determine the duration needed to successfully perform the task with and without the color difference. As we expected, color segmentation reduced the amount of time needed to process and encode both directions of motion. Thus we find a dissociation between the effects of attention on the speed of processing and conscious perception of direction. We propose four potential mechanisms wherein color speeds figure-ground segmentation of an object, attentional switching between objects, direction discrimination and/or the accumulation of motion information for decision-making, without affecting conscious perception of the direction. Potential neural bases are also explored.
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Affiliation(s)
- Carolyn J Perry
- Visual Perception and Attention Laboratory, School of Kinesiology and Health Science, York University Toronto, ON, Canada
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Farrell-Whelan M, Wenderoth P, Brooks KR. The Hierarchical Order of Processes Underlying the Direction Illusion and the Direction Aftereffect. Perception 2012; 41:389-401. [DOI: 10.1068/p6961] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/28/2022]
Abstract
Motion perception involves the processing of velocity signals through several hierarchical stages of the visual cortex. To better understand this process, a number of studies have sought to localise the neural substrates of two misperceptions of motion direction, the direction illusion (DI) and the direction aftereffect (DAE). These studies have produced contradictory evidence as to the hierarchical order of the processing stages from which the respective phenomena arise. We have used a simple stimulus configuration to further investigate the sequential order of processes giving rise to the DI and DAE. To this end, we measured the two phenomena invoked in combination, and also manually parsed this combined effect into its two constituents by measuring the two phenomena individually in both possible sequential orders. Comparing the predictions made from each order to the outcome from the combined effect allowed us to test the tenability of two models: the DAE-first model and the DI-first model. Our results indicate that DAE-invoking activity does not occur earlier in the motion processing hierarchy than DI-invoking activity. Although the DI-first model is not inconsistent with our data, the possible involvement of non-sequential processing may be better able to reconcile these results with those of previous studies.
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Affiliation(s)
- Max Farrell-Whelan
- Department of Psychology, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia
| | - Peter Wenderoth
- Department of Psychology, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia
| | - Kevin R Brooks
- Department of Psychology, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia
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9
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Dichoptic reduction of the direction illusion is not due to binocular rivalry. Vision Res 2010; 50:1824-32. [DOI: 10.1016/j.visres.2010.06.003] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/30/2009] [Revised: 03/30/2010] [Accepted: 06/07/2010] [Indexed: 11/22/2022]
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10
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Beardsley SA, Vaina LM. An effect of relative motion on trajectory discrimination. Vision Res 2008; 48:1040-52. [PMID: 18304601 DOI: 10.1016/j.visres.2008.01.009] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/29/2006] [Revised: 12/28/2007] [Accepted: 01/10/2008] [Indexed: 10/22/2022]
Abstract
Psychophysical studies point to the existence of specialized mechanisms sensitive to the relative motion between an object and its background. Such mechanisms would seem ideal for the motion-based segmentation of objects; however, their properties and role in processing the visual scene remain unclear. Here we examine the contribution of relative motion mechanisms to the processing of object trajectory. In a series of four psychophysical experiments we examine systematically the effects of relative direction and speed differences on the perceived trajectory of an object against a moving background. We show that background motion systematically influences the discrimination of object direction. Subjects' ability to discriminate direction was consistently better for objects moving opposite a translating background than for objects moving in the same direction as the background. This effect was limited to the case of a translating background and did not affect perceived trajectory for more complex background motions associated with self-motion. We interpret these differences as providing support for the role of relative motion mechanisms in the segmentation and representation of object motions that do not occlude the path of an observer's self-motion.
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Affiliation(s)
- Scott A Beardsley
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, Marquette University, P.O. Box 1881, Milwaukee, WI 53201, USA.
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11
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Interaction between complex motion patterns in the perception of shape. Vision Res 2007; 48:167-78. [PMID: 18068751 DOI: 10.1016/j.visres.2007.10.019] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/09/2007] [Revised: 09/19/2007] [Accepted: 10/28/2007] [Indexed: 11/22/2022]
Abstract
We investigated how different types of complex motion patterns interact in the perception of shape. We used global dot-motion stimuli which consisted of two superimposed groups of dots; one group of dots moved along an ellipsoidal trajectory (target pattern), while the other group of dots was divided into quadrants with dots in alternating sectors moving in radial expanding and radial contracting directions (background pattern). In the first experiment, observers judged whether the major axis of an ellipsoidal motion pattern oriented at 45 degrees or -45 degrees from vertical lay to the right or to the left of a central vertical line. Ellipsoids with different aspect ratios, which controlled both the tilt (left or right of vertical) and the extent of ellipsoidal curvature, were presented to observers using method of constant stimuli. The appearance of the ellipsoidal target pattern was distorted in the presence of background motion. The aspect ratio of the target at which observers perceived the figure to be circular was approximately 0.86 (an aspect ratio of 1.0 indicates a circle), with the pattern's major axis lying in the two sectors that contained contracting motion. This finding may constitute evidence that background motion distorts the perception of space, resulting in a distorted target pattern. However, the distortion effect is limited to conditions for which the speed of the target pattern and background pattern was slow and high contrast, and for when dots forming the target and background patterns were of the same luminance polarity.
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12
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van Boxtel JJA, Erkelens CJ. A single motion system suffices for global-motion perception. Vision Res 2006; 46:4634-45. [PMID: 17083958 DOI: 10.1016/j.visres.2006.06.015] [Citation(s) in RCA: 12] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/28/2005] [Revised: 04/19/2006] [Accepted: 06/19/2006] [Indexed: 11/19/2022]
Abstract
Global-motion perception is the perception of coherent motion in a noisy motion stimulus. Thresholds for coherent motion perception were measured for different combinations of signal and noise speeds. Previous research [Edwards, M., Badcock, D. R., & Smith, A. T. (1998). Independent speed-tuned global-motion systems. Vision Research, 38 (11), 1573-1580; Khuu, S. K., & Badcock, D. R. (2002). Global speed processing: evidence for local averaging within, but not across two speed ranges. Vision Research, 42 (28), 3031-3042.] showed that thresholds were elevated when signal and noise speeds were similar, but not when they were different. The regions of increased threshold values for low and high signal speeds showed little overlap. On the basis of this evidence two independent speed-tuned systems were proposed: one for slow and one for fast-motion. However, in those studies only two signal speeds were used. We expanded the results by measuring threshold-curves for four different signal speeds. Considerable overlap of the threshold-curves was found between conditions. These results speak against a bipartite global-motion system. Model simulations indicate that present and previous experimental results can be produced by a single motion system providing that the mechanisms within it are speed-tuned.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jeroen J A van Boxtel
- Department Physics of Man, Helmholtz Institute, Utrecht University, Princetonplein 5, 3584 CC Utrecht, The Netherlands
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Curran W, Clifford CWG, Benton CP. The direction aftereffect is driven by adaptation of local motion detectors. Vision Res 2006; 46:4270-8. [PMID: 17034831 DOI: 10.1016/j.visres.2006.08.026] [Citation(s) in RCA: 11] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/25/2006] [Revised: 08/28/2006] [Accepted: 08/29/2006] [Indexed: 11/27/2022]
Abstract
The processing of motion information by the visual system can be decomposed into two general stages; point-by-point local motion extraction, followed by global motion extraction through the pooling of the local motion signals. The direction aftereffect (DAE) is a well known phenomenon in which prior adaptation to a unidirectional moving pattern results in an exaggerated perceived direction difference between the adapted direction and a subsequently viewed stimulus moving in a different direction. The experiments in this paper sought to identify where the adaptation underlying the DAE occurs within the motion processing hierarchy. We found that the DAE exhibits interocular transfer, thus demonstrating that the underlying adapted neural mechanisms are binocularly driven and must, therefore, reside in the visual cortex. The remaining experiments measured the speed tuning of the DAE, and used the derived function to test a number of local and global models of the phenomenon. Our data provide compelling evidence that the DAE is driven by the adaptation of motion-sensitive neurons at the local-processing stage of motion encoding. This is in contrast to earlier research showing that direction repulsion, which can be viewed as a simultaneous presentation counterpart to the DAE, is a global motion process. This leads us to conclude that the DAE and direction repulsion reflect interactions between motion-sensitive neural mechanisms at different levels of the motion-processing hierarchy.
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Affiliation(s)
- William Curran
- School of Psychology, Queen's University of Belfast, Belfast, BT7 1NN, UK.
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