Biomedical subjects

George Sperling

Publications and source records attributed to George Sperling.

6 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

When motion appears stopped: stereo motion standstill.

Motion standstill is different from the usual perceptual experiences associated with objects in motion. In motion standstill, a pattern that is moving quite rapidly is perceived as being motionless, and yet its details are not blurred but clearly visible. We revisited motion standstill in dynamic random-dot stereograms similar to those first used by Julesz and Payne [Julesz B, Payne R (1968) Vision Res 8:433-444]. Three improvements were made to their paradigm to avoid possible confounds: The temporal frequency of the motion stimuli was manipulated independently from that of individual stereo gratings so that the failure of motion perception is not due to inability to compute stereo. The motion of the stereo gratings was continuous across the visual field so that the perceived pattern in motion standstill was not a simple average of a back-and-forth display wobble over time. Observers discriminated three spatial frequencies to demonstrate pattern recognition. Three objective psychophysical methods, instead of merely self-report, were used to objectively demonstrate motion standstill. Our results confirm that motion standstill occurs in dynamic random-dot stereogram motion displays at 4-6 Hz. Motion standstill occurs when the stimulus spatiotemporal frequency combination exceeds that of the salience-based third-order motion system in a spatiotemporal frequency range in which the shape and depth systems still function. The ability of shape systems to extract a representative image from a series of moving samples is a significant component of a biological system's ability to derive a stable perceptual world from a constantly changing visual environment.

Adult↗

PubMed2006

A gain-control theory of binocular combination.

In binocular combination, light images on the two retinas are combined to form a single "cyclopean" perceptual image, in contrast to binocular rivalry which occurs when the two eyes have incompatible ("rivalrous") inputs and only one eye;s stimulus is perceived. We propose a computational theory for binocular combination with two basic principles of interaction: in every spatial neighborhood, each eye (i) exerts gain control on the other eye's signal in proportion to the contrast energy of its own input and (ii) additionally exerts gain control on the other eye's gain control. For stimuli of ordinary contrast, when either eye is stimulated alone, the predicted cyclopean image is the same as when both eyes are stimulated equally, coinciding with an easily observed property of natural vision. The gain-control theory is contrast dependent: Very low-contrast stimuli to the left- and right-eye add linearly to form the predicted cyclopean image. The intrinsic nonlinearity manifests itself only as contrast increases. To test the theory more precisely, a horizontal sine wave grating of 0.68 cycles per degree is presented to each eye. The gratings differ in contrast and phase. The predicted (and perceived) cyclopean grating also is a sine wave; its apparent phase indicates the relative contribution of the two eyes to the cyclopean image. For 48 measured combinations of phase and contrast, the theory with only one estimated parameter accounts for 95% of the variance of the data. Therefore, a simple, robust, physiologically plausible gain-control theory accurately describes an early stage of binocular combination.

Contrast Sensitivity↗

PubMed2005

Attentional modulation of SSVEP power depends on the network tagged by the flicker frequency.

Modulation of the steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP) by attention was studied in detail using 15 'tag' frequencies in the range of 2.5-20 Hz. The stimuli were two series of random disc search arrays superimposed on two concentric color-marked annuli respectively. Two series of arrays were updated independently; one updated at one fixed frequency (flicker) and the other updated randomly according to a white noise distribution (random broadband flicker, rbbf). On each trial, the observer was instructed to attend one annulus and to detect a target (a triangle) that occasionally appeared in a random disc array in the attended annulus. The SSVEP results show that the choice of flicker frequency selects which cortical network synchronizes to the flicker two distinct cortical networks showed different effects of attention. SSVEP power and the effects of attention on SSVEP power strongly depend on both flicker frequency and radial position of rbbf annulus. At flicker frequencies in the delta band (2-4 Hz), and in the upper alpha band (10-11 Hz), an occipital-frontal network appears to phase-lock to the flicker when attending to the flicker, increasing the magnitude of the SSVEP. At flicker frequencies in the lower alpha band (8-10 Hz), a global response to a peripheral flickering stimulus, that includes parietal cortex and posterior frontal cortex, has higher amplitude when attention is directed away from the flickering peripheral stimulus and towards a competing rbbf stimulus in the fovea. Increases in SSVEP power when attention is directed to peripheral flicker are always associated with increases in phase locking. By contrast, at frequencies in the lower alpha band, increases in SSVEP power when attention is directed away from the flicker and towards foveal stimuli are not associated with changes in phase-locking. Thus, whether attention to a flicker stimulus increases or decreases SSVEP amplitude and phase locking depends on which of two cortical networks, which have distinct spatial and dynamic properties, is selected by the flicker frequency.

Action Potentials↗

PubMed2004

Long-lasting sensitization to a given colour after visual search.

Visual attention enables an observer to select specific visual information for processing. In an ambiguous motion task in which a coloured grating can be perceived as moving in either of two opposite directions depending on the relative salience of two colours in the display, attending to one of the colours influences the direction in which the grating appears to move. Here, we use this secondary effect of attention in a motion task to measure the effect of attending to a specific colour in a search task. Observers performed a search task in which they searched for a target letter in a 4 x 4 coloured matrix. Each of the 16 squares within a matrix was assigned one of four colours, and observers knew that the target letter would appear on only one of these colours throughout the experiment. Observers performed the ambiguous motion task before and after the search task. Attending to a particular colour for a brief period in the search task profoundly influenced the perceived direction of motion. This effect lasted for up to one month and in some cases had to be reversed by practising searches for the complementary colour, indicating a much longer-persisting effect of attention than has been observed previously.

Attention↗

PubMed2004

The spatial distribution of visual attention.

We use a novel search task to investigate the spatial distribution of visual attention, developing a general model from the data. Observers distribute attention to locations defined by stripes with a high penalty for attention to intervening areas. Attended areas are defined by a square-wave grating. A target is in one of the even stripes, and ten false targets (identical to the real target) are in the odd stripes; the observer must attend the even stripes and strongly ignore the odd, reporting the location of the target. As the spatial frequency of the grating increases, performance declines. Variations on this task inform a model that incorporates stimulus input, a "low pass" attentional modulation transfer function, and an acuity function to produce a strength map from which the location with the highest strength is selected. A feature-strength map that adds to the attention map enables the model to predict the results of attention-cued conjunction search experiments, and internal noise enables it to predict the outcome of double-pass experiments and of variations in the number of false targets. The model predicted performance on a trial-by-trial basis for three observers, accounting for approximately 70% of the trials. Actual trial-to-trial variation for an observer, using the double-pass method, is about 76%. For any requested distribution of spatial attention, this general model makes a prediction of the actually achieved distribution.

Attention↗

PubMed2002

Measuring and modeling the trajectory of visual spatial attention.

In a novel choice attention-gating paradigm, observers monitor a stream of 3 x 3 letter arrays until a tonal cue directs them to report 1 row. Analyses of the particular arrays from which reported letters are chosen and of the joint probabilities of reporting pairs of letters are used to derive a theory of attention dynamics. An attention window opens 0.15 s following a cue to attend to a location, remains open (minimally) 0.2 s, and admits information simultaneously from all the newly attended locations. The window dynamics are independent of the distance moved. The theory accounts for about 90% of the variance from the over 400 data points obtained from each of the observers in the 3 experiments reported here. With minor elaborations, it applies to all the principal paradigms used to study the dynamics of visual spatial attention.

Adult↗