Electrophysiological responses to regularity show specificity to global form: The case of Glass patterns

Abstract

The holographic weight of evidence model (van der Helm & Leeuwenberg, J Math Psychol, 35, 1991, 151; van der Helm & Leeuwenberg, Psychol Rev, 103, 1996, 429) estimates that the perceptual goodness of moiré structures (Glass patterns), irrespective of their global form, is comparable to that of reflection symmetry. However, both behavioural and neuroscience evidences suggest that certain Glass forms (i.e. circular and radial structures) are perceptually more salient than others (i.e. translation structures) and may recruit different perceptual mechanisms. In this study, we tested whether brain responses for circular, radial and translation Glass patterns are comparable to the response for onefold bilateral reflection symmetry. We recorded an event‐related potential (ERP), called the sustained posterior negativity (SPN), which has been shown to index perceptual goodness of a range of regularities. We found that circular and radial Glass patterns generated a comparable SPN amplitude to onefold reflection symmetry (in line with the prediction of the holographic model), starting approx. 180 ms after stimulus onset. Conversely, the SPN response to translation Glass patterns had a longer latency (approx. 400 ms). These results show that Glass patterns are a special case of visual regularity, and perceptual goodness may not be fully explained by the holographic identities that constitute it. Specialised processing mechanisms might exist in the regularity‐sensitive extrastriate areas, which are tuned to global form configurations.

Spinning objects and partial occlusion: Smart neural responses to symmetry

“…The latter study showed that when (irregular) parts of a symmetric shape are shown at different points in time, the visual system can retain information and integrate it with newer information. The output of this integration was evidenced by an ERP component known as Sustained Posterior Negativity (SPN) (Makin et al, 2016;Rampone & Makin, 2020). In stimuli were presented within a static reference frame.…”

Spatial and Temporal Selectivity of Translational Glass Patterns Assessed With the Tilt After-Effect

“…This relationship between local and global form gives versatility to the pattern, as various aspects of the local form can be changed while maintaining the overall global form, such as the spatial frequency content ( Dakin & Bex, 2001 ), density ( Dakin, 1997a ), colour ( Mandelli & Kiper, 2005 ), and contrast ( Dakin & Bex, 2001 ; Lin et al., 2017 ; Wilson et al., 2004 ). This versatility allowed to investigate how the visual system pools local orientation signals into a global form percept ( Chen, 2009 ; Dakin & Bex, 2001 ; Nankoo et al., 2012 ) and the neural substrates underlying the perception of different spatial configurations ( Krekelberg et al., 2005 ; Makin et al., 2016 ; Ostwald et al., 2008 ; Rampone & Makin, 2020 ).…”

Overlapping Neural Responses to Reflectional Symmetry and Glass Patterns Revealed by an ERP Priming Paradigm

“…In addition, lesions to V4 impair Glass pattern perception [20]. The steadystate VEP response to reflectional symmetry and Glass patterns is comparable [21,22], and both regularities generate the same SPN [12,23]. SPNs generated by reflection and Glass patterns are shown in Figure 1A.…”