Budget Amount *help |
¥1,800,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,800,000)
Fiscal Year 1992: ¥300,000 (Direct Cost: ¥300,000)
Fiscal Year 1991: ¥1,500,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,500,000)
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Research Abstract |
The preattentive process is a mode of perception in which the information is processed in a wide visual field, rapidly and automatically, without attention. This process plays an important role to pick up outline properties from the inputted information and to make quickly a basic representations for the formation of higher cognitions. We found the following common characteristics in preattentive process, from the experiments on texture perception, visual search, figure-ground perception, visual interpolation, and compound pattern perception. The perceptual responses in preattentive process are quick and transient, with higher temporal frequency preference. Their spatial resolution is low, but they show the strong linking property to process collectively the regions which have the same features. Their luminance contrast sensitivity is extremely good, but their color contrast sensitivity is poor. From these findings, we regard the magno system investigated by Livingstone & Hubel as a neurophysiological basis for the preattentive process. The receptive fields of the magno neurons are large and their responses are fast. The mutual connections are reported among the neurons which extract the same features. The magno neurons show strong luminace contrast sensitivity, but poor sensitivity to color contrast. Some of the current models of attention are proposed based on the WTA (Winner-Take-All) network or on the synchronization of oscillatory neural responses. If these ideas are extended in the context of the magno system's activity, it is suggest to be possible to inhibit redundant information and to guide attention effectively at the critical location and resolution for object recognition.
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