Object categorization in visual periphery is modulated by delayed foveal noise

Ramezani, Farzad; Kheradpisheh, Saeed Reza; Thorpe, Simon J.; Ghodrati, Masoud

doi:10.1167/19.9.1

Cited by 9 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 59 publications

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“…Feedback signals from higher to lower areas are necessary for “vision with scrutiny.” This slower route provides information about low level features, such as color, orientation, shape, etc. The graded effect of foveal feedback ( Fan et al, 2016 ; Yu & Shim, 2016 ; Ramezani et al, 2019 ; Weldon et al, 2020 ) is consistent with these assumptions of the reverse hierarchy theory.…”

Section: Foveal-peripheral Interactions During Fixationsupporting

confidence: 77%

“…As mentioned above, object recognition for blurred objects is not impaired ( Fan et al, 2016 ), suggesting that foveal feedback is only relevant for, or involved in, the analysis of fine spatial details. Object categorization itself is only impaired by foveal distraction on a subordinate level (duck versus non-duck) and a basic level (bird versus non-bird), but not on superordinate level (animal versus non-animal; Ramezani, Kheradpisheh, Thorpe, & Ghodrati, 2019 ). Overall, these results illustrate that peripheral processing is only sufficient for coarse analysis and recognition, and that foveal processing is necessary for the analysis of object details.…”

Section: Foveal-peripheral Interactions During Fixationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A review of interactions between peripheral and foveal vision

2020

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Visual processing varies dramatically across the visual field. These differences start in the retina and continue all the way to the visual cortex. Despite these differences in processing, the perceptual experience of humans is remarkably stable and continuous across the visual field. Research in the last decade has shown that processing in peripheral and foveal vision is not independent, but is more directly connected than previously thought. We address three core questions on how peripheral and foveal vision interact, and review recent findings on potentially related phenomena that could provide answers to these questions. First, how is the processing of peripheral and foveal signals related during fixation? Peripheral signals seem to be processed in foveal retinotopic areas to facilitate peripheral object recognition, and foveal information seems to be extrapolated toward the periphery to generate a homogeneous representation of the environment. Second, how are peripheral and foveal signals re-calibrated? Transsaccadic changes in object features lead to a reduction in the discrepancy between peripheral and foveal appearance. Third, how is peripheral and foveal information stitched together across saccades? Peripheral and foveal signals are integrated across saccadic eye movements to average percepts and to reduce uncertainty. Together, these findings illustrate that peripheral and foveal processing are closely connected, mastering the compromise between a large peripheral visual field and high resolution at the fovea. Brief overview of differences between peripheral and foveal vision Although the human eye is often compared to a photographic camera, processing across the visual field is not homogeneous like in a camera film or a digital sensor. First, there are gaps in sensory information due to several anatomical properties of the eye: (a) there are no photoreceptors in the optic disc, where the axons of the retinal ganglion cells exit the eyeball: this leads to a blind spot (Mariotte, 1740, cited after Ferree & Rand, 1912; Grzybowski & Aydin, 2007). (b) The center of the retina contains only cone, but no rod photoreceptors (Schultze, 1866; Oesterberg, 1935; Curcio, Sloan, Kalina, & Hendrickson, 1990), leading to a central scotoma under dark illumination conditions. (c) Because photoreceptors are located on the back side of the retina, away from the light, blood vessels cast shadows on them (Purkinje, 1819; von Helmholtz, 1867; Evans, 1927; Adams & Horton, 2002). The second striking difference to a photographic camera is that the processing of visual signals varies quite dramatically across the visual field. Here, an important distinction arises between the center of the visual field, called the fovea, and the rest, called the periphery. 1 We only briefly highlight some of the key differences in processing and perception between the fovea and the periphery because these have been reviewed in detail elsewhere

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Section: Foveal-peripheral Interactions During Fixationsupporting

confidence: 77%

Section: Foveal-peripheral Interactions During Fixationmentioning

confidence: 99%

A review of interactions between peripheral and foveal vision

2020

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“…Further support for the peripheral-to-foveal feedback hypothesis comes from behavioral studies in which interference was produced by a subsequent mask (for a review, see Stewart et al 3 ). Mask disruption on peripheral discrimination occurred in a specific time window, which ranged from 117 10 – 12 to 300 ms 1 , 13 . The importance of feedback in early visual processing was known prior to these studies, but it was thought to represent a predictive mechanism that would support feedforward visual processing within a rigid retinotopic organisation 14 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Furthermore, if this feedback was predictive, one could expect an effect on every peripheral task independently of task difficulty. The disruptive effect of the mask instead is specific to challenging tasks that require fine object discrimination 6 , 13 . Finally, since we can foveate only one object at a time, in a peripheral comparison task we should expect little or no effect of mask since only information from one of the two simultaneous targets could be brought to the fovea.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Investigating the role of the foveal cortex in peripheral object discrimination

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Oletto

Cessa

et al. 2022

Sci Rep

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Peripheral object discrimination is hindered by a central dynamic mask presented between 150 and 300 ms after stimulus onset. The mask is thought to interfere with task-relevant feedback coming from higher visual areas to the foveal cortex in V1. Fan et al. (2016) supported this hypothesis by showing that the effect of mask can be further delayed if the task requires mental manipulation of the peripheral target. The main purpose of this study was to better characterize the temporal dynamics of foveal feedback. Specifically, in two experiments we have shown that (1) the effect of foveal noise mask is sufficiently robust to be replicated in an online data collection (2) in addition to a change in sensitivity the mask affects also the criterion, which becomes more conservative; (3) the expected dipper function for sensitivity approximates a quartic with a global minimum at 94 ms, while the best fit for criterion is a quintic with a global maximum at 174 ms; (4) the power spectrum analysis of perceptual oscillations in sensitivity data shows a cyclic effect of mask at 3 and 12 Hz. Overall, our results show that foveal noise affects sensitivity in a cyclic manner, with a global dip emerging earlier than previously found. The noise also affects the response bias, even though with a different temporal profile. We, therefore, suggest that foveal noise acts on two distinct feedback mechanisms, a faster perceptual feedback followed by a slower cognitive feedback.

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“…The foveal bias towards high spatial frequency and peripheral bias towards coarse representations could play an important role in the temporal interactions that have been reported between respective retinotopic regions using transcranial stimulation (Chambers et al, 2013) and deficits in categorisation of peripherally presented stimuli due to temporally delayed presentation of noise at the fovea (Ramezani et al, 2019). We want to emphasize that our results relate to information processing when fixation has already been attained on a target, although coarse sampling of peripheral information has been shown to be a beneficial contextual signal that can guide exploratory eye movements as well (Torralba et al, 2006).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%