Perceiving and Recognizing Objects

1. 4 Perceiving and Recognizing Objects

2. Object Recognition • Objects in the brain • Extrastriate cortex: The region of cortex bordering the primary visual cortex and containing multiple areas involved in visual processing • After extrastriate cortex, processing of object information is split into a “what” pathway and a “where” pathway • “Where” pathway is concerned with the locations and shapes of objects but not their names or functions • “What” pathway is concerned with the names and functions of objects regardless of where they are

3. Figure 4.35 Visual cortical processing can be divided into two broad streams of processing

4. Object Recognition • Inferotemporal (IT) cortex: Part of the cerebral cortex in the lower portion of the temporal lobe, important for object recognition • Part of the “what” pathway • When IT cortex is lesioned, it leads to agnosia

5. Object Recognition • Grandmother cells • Could a single neuron be responsible for recognizing your grandmother? • Feed-forward process: A process that carries out a computation one neural step after another, without need for feedback from a later stage to an earlier stage • Object recognition occurs so quickly that feed-forward processes must be occuring

6. SUMMARY • What is the role of middle vision? •  organize visual input • Perceptual “committees”: many processes have to be in agreement • Gestalt rules: reflect regularities of physical world • Object recognition models: • templates: like photographs? • structural: relationship among parts important • Faces are prime example: viewpoint crucial • Some brain areas are highly specialized

7. 5 The Perception of Color

8. Basic Principles of Color Perception • Color is not a physical property but a psychophysical property • Most of the light we see is reflected • Typical light sources: Sun, light bulb, fire • We see only part of the electromagnetic spectrum—between 400 and 700 nm

9. Figure 5.2 Lights of 450 and 625 nm each elicit the same response from this photoreceptor Separate photoreceptor for each wavelength (color)?

10. Basic Principles of Color Perception • Problem of univariance: response from a single type of photoreceptor is ambiguous • same for different wavelengths • same for properly adjusted intensity • Therefore, one type of photoreceptor cannot make color discriminations based on wavelength

11. Color perceived both in daylight and in darkness? • Photopic light: • bright enough for cone receptors • bright enough to “saturate” rod receptors • Sunlight and bright indoor lighting are both photopic lighting conditions • Scotopic light: • bright enough for rod receptors • too dim for cone receptors • Moonlight and extremely dim indoor lighting are both scotopic lighting conditions • No color discrimination possible (color not physical!)

12. Figure 5.3 The moonlit world appears to be drained of color

13. Trichromacy: 3 types of cones • Cone photoreceptors: Three varieties: • S-cones: Cones that are preferentially sensitive to short wavelengths (“blue” cones) • M-cones: Cones that are preferentially sensitive to middle wavelengths (“green” cones) • L-cones: Cones that are preferentially sensitive to long wavelengths (“red” cones)

14. Figure 5.4 The two wavelengths that produce the same response from one type of cone (M), produce different patterns of responses across the three types of cones (S, M, and L)

15. Trichromacy • Trichromacy: The theory that the color of any light is defined in our visual system by the relationships of three numbers, the outputs of three receptor types now known to be the three cones • Also known as the Young–Helmholtz theory

16. Trichromacy: Issues and problems • Metamers: Different mixtures of wavelengths that look identical. More generally, any pair of stimuli that are perceived as identical in spite of physical differences Physical stimulus Perception A P B

17. Trichromacy • Additive color mixing: A mixture of lights • If light A and light B are both reflected from a surface to the eye, in the perception of color the effects of those two lights add together

18. Figure 5.9 Georges Seurat’s painting La Parade (1887–1888) illustrates the effect of additive color mixture with paints Mixing additively possible with paints too!

19. Trichromacy • Subtractive color mixing: A mixture of pigments • If pigment A and B mix, some of the light shining on the surface will be subtracted by A and some by B. Only the remainder contributes to the perception of color • Result of physical mixing of paints

20. Figure 5.7 In this example of subtractive color mixture, “white”—broadband—light is passed through two filters

21. Trichromacy • Color space: A three-dimensional space that describes all colors. There are several possible color spaces • RGB color space: Defined by the outputs of long, medium, and short wavelength lights • HSB color space: Defined by hue, saturation, and brightness • Hue: The chromatic (color) aspect of light • Saturation: The chromatic strength of a hue • Brightness: The distance from black in color space

22. Figure 5.10 A color picker may offer several ways to specify a color in a three-dimensional color space brightness saturation

23. Figure 5.11 The curvaceous triangle shown here represents all the colors that can be seen (at one brightness level) by the human visual system green red

24. Trichromacy • History of color vision • Thomas Young (1773–1829) and Hermann von Helmholtz (1821–1894) independently discovered the trichromatic nature of color perception • This is why trichromatic theory is sometimes called the “Young–Helmholtz theory” • James Maxwell (1831–1879) developed a color-matching technique that is still being used today

25. Figure 5.12 A modern version of Maxwell’s color-matching experiment Task: match the reference light by mixing Need at least three lights Next week: opponent processes theory