Neuroimaging of human 3D depth perception and its applications

2015 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 26870911
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Cognitive science; Experimental psychology
• Research Institution: National Institute of Information and Communications Technology
• Principal Investigator: Ban Hiroshi 国立研究開発法人情報通信研究機構, 脳情報通信融合研究センター・脳情報通信融合研究室, 研究員 (00467391)
• Project Period (FY): 2014-04-01 – 2016-03-31
• Keywords: fMRI / 奥行き知覚 / 3D / 視覚心理学 / 神経科学 / 視知覚

Outline of Final Research Achievements

A fundamental challenge in visual neuroscience is to understand how the outputs of neurons responding to local, simple elements are progressively transformed to encode the critical features of spatially-extensive objects. While models of the ventral stream detail the decoding transformations that support invariance, much less is known about the dorsal hierarchy. In this research project, using human fMRI, I especially focused on the cortical processing of binocular depth signals that strongly engage dorsal pathways. In addition, I tried to reveal how and where in the brain binocular disparities and pictorial depth cues (e.g. shading, motion) are fused into a unified depth representation. I found that local binocular disparities are gradually integrated into a coherent 3D surface from V1 to V3B, and that multiple depth cues are integrated in V3B, an adjacent region of V3A. I further tried to apply those findings for future novel 3D visualization techniques.

Free Research Field

実験心理学