The Quantized Geometry of Visual Space: The Coherent Computation of Depth, Form, and Lightness. Revised Version.
Abstract
A theory is presented of how global visual interactions between depth, length lightness, and form percepts can occur. The theory suggests how quantized activity patterns which reflect these visual properties can coherently fill-in, or complete, visually ambiguous regions starting with visually informative data features. Phenomena such as the Cornsweet and Craik-O'Brien effects, phantoms and subjective contours, binocular brightness summation, the equidistance tendency, Emmert's law, allelotropia, multiple spatial frequency scaling and edge detection, figure-ground completion, co-existence of depth and binocular rivalry, reflectance rivalry, Fechner's paradox, decrease of threshold contrast with increased number of cycles in a grating pattern, hysteresis, adaption level tuning, Weber law modulation, shift of sensitivity with background luminance, and the finite capacity of visual short term memory are discussed in terms of a small set of concepts and mechanisms. Limitations of alternative visual theories which depend on Fourier analysis, Laplacians, zero-crossings, and cooperative depth planes are described. Relationships between monocular and binocular processing of the same visual patterns are noted, and a shift in emphasis from edge and disparity computations towards the characterization of resonant activity-scaling correlations across multiple spatial scales is recommended. (Author)
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Aug 01, 1982
- Accession Number
- ADA119240
Entities
People
- Stephen Grossberg
Organizations
- Boston University