The extraction of a global orientation structure presumably has a different neural mechanism from that of the analysis of its local features. We investigated spatial integration within these two mechanisms using stimulus patterns composed of dot pairs (dipoles). The stimuli targeted local feature detection, contained no global configuration, but rather contained randomly oriented dipoles of a fixed length (the distance between the dots in a pair). For the detection of a global orientation structure, local dipole orientations were arranged in a concentric Glass pattern. Thresholds as a function of a stimulus area were determined by measuring the minimum proportion of dipoles among random-dot noise (signal-to-noise ratio) required for the detection of dipoles (features), as well as for the detection of an orientation structure. Thresholds for feature detection were significantly higher than those for the detection of the global structure--regardless of the stimulus size. Spatial integration, however, did not differ between the two tasks: the exponents of the power functions fitted to data for six observers were -0.48 +/- 0.07 for random dipole orientations and -0.62 +/- 0.1 for Glass patterns.

The color red seems to be consistently associated with the concept of anger. Beyond semantic associations, it has been suggested that the color red enhances our ability to perceive anger in faces. However, previous studies often lack proper color control or the results are confounded by the presence of several emotions. Moreover, the magnitude of the (potential) effect of red has not been quantified. To address these caveats, we quantified the effect of facial color and background color on anger with psychometric functions measured with the method-of-constant-stimuli while facial hue or surround hue was varied in CIELAB color space. Stimulus sequences were generated by morphing between neutral and angry faces. For the facial color, the average chromaticity of the faces was shifted by ΔE 12/20 in red, yellow, green and blue directions. For the background color, the hue was either neutral or saturated red, green or blue. Both facial redness and surround redness enhanced perceived anger slightly, by 3–4 morph-%. Other colors did not affect perceived anger. As the magnitude of the enhancement is generally small and the effect is robust only in a small subset of the participants, we question the practical significance of red in anger recognition.

Surround modulation of perceived contrast has been almost exclusively studied in short-range conditions, i.e., in situations where a tiny gap, at most, separates center from surround. Existing long-range studies suggest that suppression extends to 12-cycle distance, whereas facilitation of perceived contrast is suggested to arise from visual field regions enclosing the center. In V1 neurons, however, long-range surround modulation involves both suppression and facilitation. Thus, we investigated short- and long-range surround modulation by measuring the perceived contrast of a center in the presence of a surround either near (0.3 cycles, 0.1 degree) or far (19.8 cycles, 6.6 degrees) from the center. This study demonstrates that in addition to the well-known suppression, surround modulation involves remarkably long-range facilitation of perceived contrast. At low center contrasts, the long-range facilitation was stronger than the long-range suppression, whereas at high center contrast we found mainly long-range suppression. Because the current models of perceived contrast could not account for our data, we considered our results in the context of models developed for surround modulation in V1 neurons. However, neither mechanistic nor phenomenological models proved satisfactory. Moreover, with the current knowledge, it seems that straightforward pooling of V1 neurons' responses cannot account for surround modulation of perceived contrast.

The apparent brightness of a surface n profoundly influenced b\ the brightness of an adjacent surface, but these contrast effects are reduced when the surfaces are perceived as separate threedimensional entities Previous work has suggested that high-level perceptual and cognitive processes involved m scene segmentation may be responsible for modifying a surface s appearance We demonstrate large reductions in contrast effects nhen the cues available for segmentation are restricted to those that isolate separate groups of early cortical neurons in the visual s\stem Our data contradict standard contrast-signaling models of brightness perception and imply that mechanisms of figure-ground segmentation are already available at lo\i levels of visual processing

Recent studies have shown that articulatory gestures are systematically associated with specific manual grip actions. Here we show that executing such actions can influence performance on a speech-categorization task. Participants watched and/or listened to speech stimuli while executing either a power or a precision grip. Grip performance influenced the syllable categorization by increasing the proportion of responses of the syllable congruent with the executed grip (power grip—[ke] and precision grip—[te]). Two follow-up experiments indicated that the effect was based on action-induced bias in selecting the syllable.