Seeing slow and seeing fast: two limits on perception

Holcombe, Alex O.

doi:10.1016/j.tics.2009.02.005

Cited by 190 publications

(180 citation statements)

References 55 publications

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“…Its inverted U-shape usually peaks around 10 Hz and reaches up to 30 to 50 Hz for strong low-level stimuli (Hart, 1987). Performance involving grouping or categorization on more complex stimuli in rapid serial visual presentation becomes virtually impossible once rates exceed 10 Hz (Holcombe, 2009). In our paradigm, perception at higher frequencies no longer preserves a sensation of alternating semantic content but instead fuses the face and house image and unties this percept from that of a persistent scene flicker.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Temporal Tuning Properties along the Human Ventral Visual Stream

et al. 2012

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Both our environment and our behavior contain many spatiotemporal regularities. Preferential and differential tuning of neural populations to these regularities can be demonstrated by assessing rate dependence of neural responses evoked during continuous periodic stimulation. Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure regional variations of temporal sensitivity along the human ventral visual stream. By alternating one face and one house stimulus, we combined sufficient low-level signal modulation with changes in semantic meaning and could therefore drive all tiers of visual cortex strongly enough to assess rate dependence. We found several dissociations between early visual cortex and middle-and higher-tier regions. First, there was a progressive slowing down of stimulation rates yielding peak responses along the ventral visual stream. This finding shows the width of temporal integration windows to increase at higher hierarchical levels. Next, for fixed rates, early but not higher visual cortex responses additionally depended on the length of stimulus exposure, which may indicate increased persistence of responses to short stimuli at higher hierarchical levels. Finally, attention, which was recruited by an incidental task, interacted with stimulation rate and shifted tuning peaks toward lower frequencies. Together, these findings quantify neural response properties that are likely to be operational during natural vision and that provide putative neurofunctional substrates of mechanisms that are relevant in several psychophysical phenomena as masking and the attentional blink. Moreover, they illustrate temporal constraints for translating the deployment of attention into enhanced neural responses and thereby account for lower limits of attentional dwell time.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Temporal Tuning Properties along the Human Ventral Visual Stream

et al. 2012

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“…Examples are global form perception from integration of local orientation signals (Clifford et al 2004), and texture edge perception from local orientation difference (Motoyoshi & Nishida 2002). See also a recent relevant review on rapid and slow processing (Holcombe 2009). …”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A common perceptual temporal limit of binding synchronous inputs across different sensory attributes and modalities

Fujisaki

Nishida²

2010

Proc. R. Soc. B.

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The human brain processes different aspects of the surrounding environment through multiple sensory modalities, and each modality can be subdivided into multiple attribute-specific channels. When the brain rebinds sensory content information ('what') across different channels, temporal coincidence ('when') along with spatial coincidence ('where') provides a critical clue. It however remains unknown whether neural mechanisms for binding synchronous attributes are specific to each attribute combination, or universal and central. In human psychophysical experiments, we examined how combinations of visual, auditory and tactile attributes affect the temporal frequency limit of synchrony-based binding. The results indicated that the upper limits of cross-attribute binding were lower than those of withinattribute binding, and surprisingly similar for any combination of visual, auditory and tactile attributes (2 -3 Hz). They are unlikely to be the limits for judging synchrony, since the temporal limit of a crossattribute synchrony judgement was higher and varied with the modality combination (4 -9 Hz). These findings suggest that cross-attribute temporal binding is mediated by a slow central process that combines separately processed 'what' and 'when' properties of a single event. While the synchrony performance reflects temporal bottlenecks existing in 'when' processing, the binding performance reflects the central temporal limit of integrating 'when' and 'what' properties.

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“…While an influence of phase on perception could be expected based on theoretical considerations (VanRullen and Koch, 2003;Schroeder and Lakatos, 2009), EEG experiments (Monto et al, 2008) and psychophysical studies (Jones et al, 2002) have so far demonstrated these effects only for slow frequencies (i.e., frequencies Ͻ2 Hz). To understand the role of brain oscillations in perception, it is critical to assess these effects on a temporal scale that is more compatible with the temporal resolution of our visual experience (VanRullen and Koch, 2003;Holcombe, 2009). Specifically, the phase of ongoing oscillations may represent an indicator of perceptual cycles, such that a stimulus appearing at the optimal phase would be optimally registered and perceived, while at another phase it might be entirely missed.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Phase of Ongoing EEG Oscillations Predicts Visual Perception

Busch¹,

Dubois²,

VanRullen³

2009

Journal of Neuroscience

1,081

111

1,178

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Oscillations are ubiquitous in electrical recordings of brain activity. While the amplitude of ongoing oscillatory activity is known to correlate with various aspects of perception, the influence of oscillatory phase on perception remains unknown. In particular, since phase varies on a much faster timescale than the more sluggish amplitude fluctuations, phase effects could reveal the fine-grained neural mechanisms underlying perception. We presented brief flashes of light at the individual luminance threshold while EEG was recorded. Although the stimulus on each trial was identical, subjects detected approximately half of the flashes (hits) and entirely missed the other half (misses). Phase distributions across trials were compared between hits and misses. We found that shortly before stimulus onset, each of the two distributions exhibited significant phase concentration, but at different phase angles. This effect was strongest in the theta and alpha frequency bands. In this time-frequency range, oscillatory phase accounted for at least 16% of variability in detection performance and allowed the prediction of performance on the single-trial level. This finding indicates that the visual detection threshold fluctuates over time along with the phase of ongoing EEG activity. The results support the notion that ongoing oscillations shape our perception, possibly by providing a temporal reference frame for neural codes that rely on precise spike timing.

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Seeing slow and seeing fast: two limits on perception

Cited by 190 publications

References 55 publications

Temporal Tuning Properties along the Human Ventral Visual Stream

Temporal Tuning Properties along the Human Ventral Visual Stream

A common perceptual temporal limit of binding synchronous inputs across different sensory attributes and modalities

The Phase of Ongoing EEG Oscillations Predicts Visual Perception

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