Abstract
The visual system is highly sensitive to spatial context for encoding luminance patterns. Context sensitivity inspired the proposal of many neural mechanisms for explaining the perception of luminance (brightness). Here we propose a novel computational model for estimating the brightness of many visual illusions. We hypothesize that many aspects of brightness can be explained by a dynamic filtering process that reduces the redundancy in edge representations on the one hand, while non-redundant activity is enhanced on the other. The dynamic filter is learned for each input image and implements context sensitivity. Dynamic filtering is applied to the responses of (model) complex cells in order to build a gain control map. The gain control map then acts on simple cell responses before they are used to create a brightness map via activity propagation. Our approach is successful in predicting many challenging visual illusions, including contrast effects, assimilation, and reverse contrast with the same set of model parameters.
Highlights
Visual perception is relative rather than absolute; the visual system (VS) computes the perceptual attributes of a visual target based on its physical properties, and by considering information from the surrounding region of the target
The first subsection focuses on contrast effect: Simultaneous Brightness Contrast, Benary Cross and Reverse Contrast
Dynamic filtering depends on pattern redundancy
Summary
Visual perception is relative rather than absolute; the visual system (VS) computes the perceptual attributes of a visual target based on its physical properties, and by considering information from the surrounding region of the target (context). Variants of these effects give rise to a myriad of visual illusions, which are of great utility for building hypothesis about computational mechanisms or perceptual rules for brightness perception. At first sight it seems that contrast effects, such as simultaneous brightness contrast (SBC; Fig 1A), can be explained by lateral inhibition between a target (center) and its context (surround). Brightness assimilation (e.g. Fig 1C and 1D) pulls a target’s brightness towards to that of its immediate context, and cannot be explained by mechanisms based on plain lateral inhibition.
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