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An Adaptable Metric Shapes Perceptual Space

How do we derive a sense of the separation of points in the world within a space-variant visual system? Visual directions are thought to be coded directly by a process referred to as local sign, in which a neuron acts as a labeled line for the perceived direction associated with its activation [1, 2...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Hisakata, Rumi, Nishida, Shin’ya, Johnston, Alan
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Cell Press 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4963211/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27426520
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2016.05.047
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author Hisakata, Rumi
Nishida, Shin’ya
Johnston, Alan
author_facet Hisakata, Rumi
Nishida, Shin’ya
Johnston, Alan
author_sort Hisakata, Rumi
collection PubMed
description How do we derive a sense of the separation of points in the world within a space-variant visual system? Visual directions are thought to be coded directly by a process referred to as local sign, in which a neuron acts as a labeled line for the perceived direction associated with its activation [1, 2]. The separations of visual directions, however, are not given, nor are they directly related to the separations of signals on the receptive surface or in the brain, which are modified by retinal and cortical magnification, respectively [3]. To represent the separation of directions veridically, the corresponding neural signals need to be scaled in some way. We considered this scaling process may be influenced by adaptation. Here, we describe a novel adaptation paradigm, which can alter both apparent spatial separation and size. We measured the perceived separation of two dots and the size of geometric figures after adaptation to random dot patterns. We show that adapting to high-density texture not only increases the apparent sparseness (average element separation) of a lower-density pattern, as expected [4], but paradoxically, it reduces the apparent separation of dot pairs and induces apparent shrinkage of geometric form. This demonstrates for the first time a contrary linkage between perceived density and perceived extent. Separation and size appear to be expressed relative to a variable spatial metric whose properties, while not directly observable, are revealed by reductions in both apparent size and texture density.
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spelling pubmed-49632112016-08-03 An Adaptable Metric Shapes Perceptual Space Hisakata, Rumi Nishida, Shin’ya Johnston, Alan Curr Biol Report How do we derive a sense of the separation of points in the world within a space-variant visual system? Visual directions are thought to be coded directly by a process referred to as local sign, in which a neuron acts as a labeled line for the perceived direction associated with its activation [1, 2]. The separations of visual directions, however, are not given, nor are they directly related to the separations of signals on the receptive surface or in the brain, which are modified by retinal and cortical magnification, respectively [3]. To represent the separation of directions veridically, the corresponding neural signals need to be scaled in some way. We considered this scaling process may be influenced by adaptation. Here, we describe a novel adaptation paradigm, which can alter both apparent spatial separation and size. We measured the perceived separation of two dots and the size of geometric figures after adaptation to random dot patterns. We show that adapting to high-density texture not only increases the apparent sparseness (average element separation) of a lower-density pattern, as expected [4], but paradoxically, it reduces the apparent separation of dot pairs and induces apparent shrinkage of geometric form. This demonstrates for the first time a contrary linkage between perceived density and perceived extent. Separation and size appear to be expressed relative to a variable spatial metric whose properties, while not directly observable, are revealed by reductions in both apparent size and texture density. Cell Press 2016-07-25 /pmc/articles/PMC4963211/ /pubmed/27426520 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2016.05.047 Text en © 2016 The Authors http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Report
Hisakata, Rumi
Nishida, Shin’ya
Johnston, Alan
An Adaptable Metric Shapes Perceptual Space
title An Adaptable Metric Shapes Perceptual Space
title_full An Adaptable Metric Shapes Perceptual Space
title_fullStr An Adaptable Metric Shapes Perceptual Space
title_full_unstemmed An Adaptable Metric Shapes Perceptual Space
title_short An Adaptable Metric Shapes Perceptual Space
title_sort adaptable metric shapes perceptual space
topic Report
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4963211/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27426520
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2016.05.047
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