Object Perception

Question 1

What is Agnosia?

Answer 1

failure to recognize objects even though you can see them

Question 2

What were the characteristics of cells in IT (inferotemporal cortex) discovered in monkeys?

Answer 2

They were discovered to have receptive fields that could spread over half the monkey’s field of view.

Question 3

What are the two main pathways for visual information from the occipital lobe?

Answer 3

“where” pathway and the “what” pathway.

Question 4

What does the “where” pathway process and where does it go?

Answer 4

The “where” pathway processes information related to the location of objects in space and actions required to interact with them, and it goes up to the parietal lobe.

Question 5

What does the “what” pathway process and where does it go?

Answer 5

The “what” pathway is responsible for explicit acts of object recognition, and it goes down to the temporal lobe.

Question 6

What is the role of the “where” pathway in attention?

Answer 6

The “where” pathway plays a role in the deployment of attention.

Question 7

What happens to receptive fields as we move into the temporal lobe?

Answer 7

Receptive fields become larger as we move into the temporal lobe.

Question 8

What is the importance of the identity of the object in the “what” pathway?
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Answer 8

In the “what” pathway, the identity of the object becomes more important than its location.

Question 9

What parts of the brain is the IT cortex closely connected to?

Answer 9

The IT cortex is closely connected to parts of the brain involved in memory formation, such as the hippocampus.

Question 10

How do respective fields and simple features of the visual cortex change as one moves from the striate cortex to the IT cortex?

Answer 10

They become more complex as one moves from the striate cortex to the IT cortex.

Question 11

What is a “grandmother cell”?

Answer 11

Any cell that seems to be selectively responsive to one specific object

Question 12

What is the Extrastriate Body Area (EBA) responsible for?

Answer 12

Responsible for being activated by body structures other than the face.

Question 13

What is the Parahippocampal Place Area (PPA) responsible for?

Answer 13

Responsible for cells that respond to places in the world like rooms with furnitue

Question 14

What is the Visual Word Form Area (VWFA) responsible for?

Answer 14

The Visual Word Form Area (VWFA) is responsible for recognizing visual written words.

Question 15

What is a feedforward process?

Answer 15

A process that carries out a computation, such as object recognition, one neural step after another, without the need for feedback from a later to an earlier stage.

Question 16

What is the reverse hierarchy theory?

Answer 16

The reverse hierarchy theory suggests that instead of processing information from small details to big picture, our brain processes information from the big picture to small details.

Question 17

What do high-level visual areas do to obtain more details about objects?

Answer 17

High-level visual areas send signals back down to low-level visual areas to obtain more details about objects.

Question 18

What is high-level vision?

Answer 18

High-level vision is the processing of complex scenes and the integration of information from multiple sources, including specific learned objects or patterns.

Question 19

What is low-level vision?

Answer 19

Low-level vision is the processing of basic features such as edges, colors, sine waves, and textures in an image.

Question 20

What is mid-level vision?

Answer 20

Mid-level vision involves the interpretation of basic features to identify meaningful objects or regions in an image, such as contours, group surfaces, figures, and borders. This includes tasks such as object recognition, motion detection, and depth estimation.

Question 21

What is the structuralist theory of perception?

Answer 21

argues that perceptions are the sum of atoms in sensation, such as bits of color, orientation, and edges

Question 22

What is the gestalt theory of perception?

Answer 22

The gestalt theory of perception argues that the perceptual whole is more than the sum of its sensory parts.

Question 23

What are the gestalt grouping rules? (6)

Answer 23

similarity, proximity, good continuation, texture segmentation, parallelism vs. symmetry, and figure-ground assignment.

Question 24

Gestalt Grouping: Similarity

Answer 24

Tendency of two features to group together will increase as the similarity between them increases

Question 25

Gestalt Grouping: Proximity

Answer 25

States that items near each other are more likely to group together than are items more widely separated

Question 26

Gestalt Grouping: Good Continuation

Answer 26

Figures with edges that are smooth are more likely seen as continuous than edges that have abrupt or sharp angles.

Question 27

Texture segmentation:

Answer 27

Refers to the process of visually separating different areas of an image based on differences in texture. I

Question 28

Figure-ground assignment

Answer 28

Process of determine that some regions of an image belong to a foreground object (figure) and other regions are a part of the background (ground)

Question 29

What are two of the strongest principles of texture segmentation?

Answer 29

Similarity and proximity

Question 30

Parallelism

Answer 30

Parallel contours are likely to belong to the same figure

Question 31

Symmetry

Answer 31

Symmetrical regions are more likely to be seen as a figure

Question 32

Reliability:

Answer 32

The degree to which two line segments appear to be a part of the same contour

Question 33

Global Superiority Effect

Answer 33

The properties of the whole object take precedence over the properties of parts of the object

Question 34

Bayesian Approach:

Answer 34

Theoretical approach that takes into account the likelihood of perceiving something given your previous experience of the world

Question 35

When do Y junctions almost always occur?

Answer 35

Y junctions almost always occur when one surface occludes another.

Question 36

What do Y and arrow junctions almost always correspond to?

Answer 36

Y and arrow junctions almost always correspond to corners and thus don’t signal occlusions.

Question 37

What are these various junctions an example of?

Answer 37

These various junctions are examples of non-accidental features.

Question 38

What is border ownership?

Answer 38

Refers to the perception of the location of an object’s border relative to its background. It helps the brain understand the different objects in a scene and make sense of what is being seen.

Question 39

Why would a border ownership cell in V2 respond more strongly to the edge of a black square than to the locally identical edge of a gray square?

Answer 39

The stronger contrast of the black square makes it easier for the border-ownership cell to detect and identify the edge and respond more strongly.

Question 40

What are border-ownership cells?

Answer 40

Border-ownership cells are neurons in the visual system that respond selectively to the presence of an edge at a particular location within the visual field and indicate which side of the edge “owns” the border, that is, which side is in the foreground and which is in the background.

Question 41

Where do border-ownership cells in V2 receive input from?

Answer 41

Border-ownership cells in V2 receive input from simple cells that respond to edges of different orientations and positions within the receptive field.