Humans perceive the shapes of objects quickly and reliably despite the complexity and objective ambiguities of natural images. Image features for an object are ambiguous because of the effects of projection together with large variations in occlusion, background clutter, illumination, and viewpoint. The very success of everyday vision implies neural mechanisms, yet to be understood, that organize ambiguous or """"""""noisy"""""""" local features into objects and surfaces. Our past work in Bayesian theories of visual perception has shown how ambiguity may be resolved through the probabilistic integration of prior object knowledge with image features. We propose to extend this work to develop and test models of the functions and mechanisms underlying the resolution of ambiguity in object perception. We propose four series of experiments that use psychophysical, computational, and neuroimaging methods to investigate how the human visual system determines object shape given occlusion, constructs surface representations from ambiguous cues, estimates changes in object depth and segments shape from realistic background clutter.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Eye Institute (NEI)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01EY015261-03
Application #
6989711
Study Section
Visual Sciences B Study Section (VISB)
Program Officer
Oberdorfer, Michael
Project Start
2003-12-01
Project End
2007-11-30
Budget Start
2005-12-01
Budget End
2006-11-30
Support Year
3
Fiscal Year
2006
Total Cost
$351,900
Indirect Cost
Name
University of Minnesota Twin Cities
Department
Psychology
Type
Schools of Arts and Sciences
DUNS #
555917996
City
Minneapolis
State
MN
Country
United States
Zip Code
55455
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