Biomedical subjects

R Blake

Publications and source records attributed to R Blake.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

PubMed1995

Discrimination of coherent motion when local motion varies in speed and direction.

Random-dot cinematograms (RDCs) consist of multiple local motion signals that can vary in direction and speed. These local motion signals can result in coherent motion: the percept of an overall direction and speed of motion in an RDC. Thresholds were obtained for discriminating differences in the strength of coherent motion. Observers were found to easily discriminate the strength of coherent motion on the basis of the elements' direction or speed under optimal conditions. However, a nonreciprocal relation was evident when this discrimination was performed under nonoptimal conditions. Discrimination of coherent motion that was based on the elements' direction was unaffected, but discrimination that was based on speed was impaired. Results indicate that humans are sensitive to small differences in coherent motion strength and suggest that the visual system processes direction and speed information nonreciprocally.

Humans↗

PubMed1995

Binocular disparity processing with opposite-contrast stimuli.

Stereoscopic perception of relative depth with reversed-contrast half images differs in several important respects from stereopsis with matched-contrast half images. Thus, reversed-contrast images show no correlated shift in visual direction, indicating that the sensory-fusion mechanism ignores opposite-sign edges; one experiment addressed this aspect of the problem. Mainly, this was a quantitative study of opposite-contrast stereopsis, in which stereoacuity was measured as a function of bar width by means of narrow-band stimuli. Acuity was about an order of magnitude worse for reversed-contrast than for matched stimuli, but the ability to see valid (disparity-dependent) depth was not altogether lost even with wide (1 cycle deg-1) reversed-contrast bars. It is generally believed that depth with opposite-contrast stimuli is mediated by interaction between binocular stimuli components that have the same sign of contrast. Perceived depth was measured as a function of disparity and thus one of the predictions of that 'same-sign hypothesis' was tested experimentally; then, the magnitude of same-sign components was manipulated within the reversed-contrast stimuli, and thus the general prediction of the same-sign hypothesis was tested. The results show conclusively that the same-sign hypothesis cannot account for opposite-contrast stereopsis; its mechanism remains unknown.

Contrast Sensitivity↗

PubMed1995

Energetic consequences of flight speeds of foraging red and hoary bats (Lasiurus borealis and Lasiurus cinereus; Chiroptera: Vespertilionidae)

We used Doppler radar readings of the flight speeds of foraging, lactating female Lasiurus borealis (N=826) and Lasiurus cinereus (N=544) to test morphologically based predictions about their flight performance. Both species flew at speeds (V=6.7 and 7.7 m s-1, respectively) that differed significantly from predicted minimum power speed (Vmp; 4.0 and 5.08 m s-1, respectively) or predicted maximum range speed (Vmr; 5.25 and 6.69 m s-1, respectively), perhaps reflecting the active pursuit of moths performing evasive manoeuvres. Estimates of costs of flight and lactation are combined with data on prey size together with encounter and capture rates to illustrate the energetic benefits accruing to these species when they forage in concentrations of insects.

Journal Article↗

PubMed1995

The mechanical power output and hydromechanical efficiency of northern pike (Esox lucius) fast-starts

The mechanical power output and hydrodynamic efficiency of northern pike, Esox lucius, during acceleration from rest (fast-start) are calculated from hydrodynamic theory for two kinematic patterns, C-starts (used in escape) and S-starts (used in prey capture). The Weihs model is employed and modified to calculate the mechanical power produced by a fish during a fast-start. A term is included for the power required to accelerate body sections laterally. Lateral deceleration of fish body sections and their associated added mass are expressed as an active process requiring energy expenditure or as a passive process requiring no energy expenditure. In addition, two methods of calculating useful power (the power used to accelerate the virtual mass of the fish, i.e. fish body mass + longitudinal added mass, in the direction of motion), one derived from the Weihs model and the second by summing the changes in kinetic energy of the virtual mass of the fish during a fast-start, are compared and found to give similar estimates of useful power (not significantly different; differences average 22 %). Comparisons of the kinematics and performance of C- and S-starts reveal that C-starts are consistently terminated after two tail flips (stages 1 and 2) whereas S-starts continue for 36 tail flips (stages 36). In addition, acceleration during C-starts is more rapid and velocities are higher (2.32.8 m s-1) than during S-starts (0.81.8 m s-1) over the first 100 ms. However, the peak velocities achieved during S-starts and C-starts are similar over the duration of a fast-start. The superior acceleration rates achieved during the initial stages of a C-start can be explained, in part, by the use of greater maximum angles of attack, higher lateral and perpendicular velocities and larger maximum forces by the caudal fin. Hydrodynamic efficiencies for fast-starts range from 0.16 to 0.39, values that are lower than those observed during either burst-and-coast or steady swimming. Efficiencies are lower for S-starts than for C-starts during the first two tail beats. S-start efficiencies increase with each subsequent tail flip and the maximum efficiencies realised are similar to those achieved during C-starts. Power output during C- and S-starts (449.0 and 394.9 W kg-1 muscle fibre, respectively) approaches the theoretical maximum for vertebrate striated muscle (500 W kg-1). Also, the inferred muscle stress is close to the predicted optimum for maximum power output, at 30 % of the maximum isometric stress recorded for isolated fast muscle fibres. These measurements suggest that fast-start performance is near a physiological limit and is probably constrained by muscle function. The superior acceleration rates achieved by C-starts over S-starts are explained in part by differences in hydrodynamic efficiency, whereas power outputs are similar.

Journal Article↗

PubMed1994

Broad tuning for spatial frequency of neural mechanisms underlying visual perception of coherent motion.

Neural events underlying perception of coherent motion are generally believed to be hierarchical: information about local motion is registered by spatio-temporal coincidence detectors whose outputs are cooperatively integrated at a subsequent stage. There is disagreement, however, concerning the spatial scale of the neural filters underlying these operations. According to one class of models, motion registration is initially accomplished in parallel at multiple spatial scales, with filters tuned to lower spatial frequencies responsive to larger motion displacements than filters tuned to higher frequencies. According to another scheme, motion analysis involves a single, broadly tuned spatial filter, with optimal displacement dependent on spacing of local elements. Here we use a masking procedure to measure the extent to which dynamic noise depicted at one spatial scale interferes with detection of coherent motion conveyed by image features at another spatial scale. Our results indicate that a single filter, broadly tuned for spatial frequency, is mediating detection of coherent motion. This finding dovetails with known physiological properties of neurons at an intermediate stage of motion processing.

Fourier Analysis↗

PubMed1994

Gibson's inspired but latent prelude to visual motion perception.

Gibson's 1954 article is paradoxical: This forward-looking review of visual motion perception anticipates developments in the field, yet those developments were achieved without closely following Gibson's footsteps. This commentary offers several possible reasons for the dormancy of Gibson's ideas about motion perception and evaluates contemporary work on motion perception in the context of Gibson's perspective.

History, 20th Century↗

PubMed1994

Binocular rivalry disrupts stereopsis.

Does the shift from binocular rivalry to fusion or stereopsis take time? We measured stereoacuity after rivalry suppression of one half-image of a stereoacuity line target. After the observer signalled that the single stereo half-image had been suppressed, the other half-image was presented for a variable duration. Stereoacuity thresholds were elevated for 150-200 ms. A control experiment demonstrated that the threshold elevation was due to rivalry suppression per se, rather than masking effects associated with the rivalry-inducing target. Monocular Vernier thresholds, measured as the smallest identifiable abrupt shift in the upper line of an aligned Vernier target that had previously been suppressed by rivalry, were elevated for a much longer duration. This result shows that an appropriately matched stereo pair can break rivalry suppression more easily than can monocular changes in position. With the aid of a similar paradigm, we also measured the duration needed to detect a disparate feature in a random-dot stereogram after rivalry suppression of one half-image of the stereogram. Observers could correctly identify the location of the disparate feature (upper or lower visual field) when the other half-image was presented for a duration ranging from 150-650 ms. In the absence of the matching half-image, the first half-image was suppressed by the rival target for a far longer duration (a few seconds). These findings show that although stereopsis and fusion terminate rivalry, both are initially disrupted for a few hundred milliseconds by rivalry suppression.

Depth Perception↗

PubMed1994

Binocular rivalry and fusion under scotopic luminances.

A study is reported of human binocular rivalry and fusion over a range of luminances from scotopic to photopic. At scotopic light levels, rivalry alternations were very slow and complete. Suppression spread over much larger areas of the visual field than at photopic light levels. As luminances decreased from photopic to scotopic levels there was a rod-cone break for binocular rivalry. Mean suppression durations became abruptly greater as light levels dropped below those allowing the cones to be active. Horizontal disparities allowing fusion were 4 to 6 times greater at scotopic than at photopic light levels. Binocular vision at scotopic luminances was sluggish and of low resolution. It is as though connections to, and within, binocular vision are changed when light levels allow only rod input.

Adult↗

PubMed1994

Interocular transfer of expansion, rotation, and translation motion aftereffects.

The motion aftereffect demonstrates the existence of direction-selective mechanisms in the visual system. However, direction-selective cells exist within many visual areas, including V1 and MT/V5. Can motion aftereffects be generated within each of these areas? In visual cortical areas beyond V1 almost all cells are binocular, whereas a smaller percentage are binocular in V1. The degree of binocularity can be revealed psychophysically by assessing interocular transfer. Interocular transfer of motion aftereffects generated from expanding rotating, and translating dynamic random-dot patterns were therefore compared, since these stimuli should activate cells in higher visual areas selectively. Partial interocular transfer was found that was greater for expansion and rotation than for translation. The results support the involvement of higher visual areas in motion aftereffects to complex animation sequences.

Female↗

PubMed1993

Visually guided attention is neutralized when informative cues are visible but unperceived.

The ability to voluntarily shift the focus of visual attention away from the focus of gaze was investigated in a novel paradigm designed to elaborate the stages of processing underlying this ability. A basic experimental method used to investigate guided visual attention involves measuring response times to targets presented at positions of which the observer has been informed by an orienting cue. Binocular rivalry was utilized to dissociate presentation of the orienting cue from visual awareness of that cue. The findings indicated that when an informative cue was presented to an eye during the dominance phase, thus reaching visual awareness, manual response times were significantly affected by cue validity. In contrast, when the same cue was presented to an eye during suppression, and thus was not seen by observers, response times were not influenced by cue validity. We conclude that to guide attention, neural signals registering informative visual cues must be processed at stages lying beyond the site of rivalry suppression. Implications for investigating the neural basis of visual attention are discussed.

Attention↗

PubMed1993

On the perceptual identity of dynamic stereopsis and kinetic depth.

This paper presents a set of experiments demonstrating novel interactions between kinetic depth (depth-from-motion) and dynamic stereopsis (depth-from-disparity). Previous research has shown that adaptation to a moving stereoscopic figure influences the subjective percept of a subsequently viewed kinetic depth figure. In this paper the interactions between kinetic depth and dynamic stereopsis are shown to be very robust and to occur in situations involving perceptual priming. It is also found that kinetic depth and dynamic stereo stimuli are indistinguishable when the stereoscopic stimulus has small, but perceptually salient, disparity. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that stimuli for kinetic depth and for dynamic stereopsis engage a common neural network.

Depth Perception↗

PubMed1993

Another means for measuring the motion aftereffect.

A new procedure for measuring the motion aftereffect (MAE) is described. The procedure involves adaptation to an animation sequence depicting dots moving in a given direction followed by presentation of a test sequence depicting dots moving in all possible directions. Under adaptation, the test sequence appears to have a directional bias opposite the direction experienced during adaptation. This MAE can be nullified by viewing an animation sequence in which a percentage of dots is constrained to move in a direction opposite the aftereffect. Using a method of constant stimuli, this percentage can be varied to find the value yielding incoherent motion. This dynamic MAE exhibits the same characteristics as the conventional MAE.

Adaptation, Ocular↗

PubMed1993

Visual alchemy: stereoscopic adaptation produces kinetic depth from random noise.

Observers perceive incoherent motion and no hint of depth when viewing stochastic motion, in which stimulus elements move in all possible directions. As earlier work has shown, depth can be specified by introducing a brief interocular delay between the presentation of corresponding animation frames of this 'noise' to the left and right eyes. A study is reported in which observers were adapted to a stereoscopic display consisting of coherent planes of motion at different depths. This stereoscopic adaptation caused incoherent depthless motion to take on the qualities of structure and depth, and it could nullify the depth induced by interocular delay. The findings are interpreted within the context of a neural model consisting of units selectively responsive to different directions of motion at different planes of depth.

Depth Perception↗

PubMed1992

Another perspective on the visual motion aftereffect.

Prolonged adaptation to motion in a given direction produces distinctly different visual motion aftereffects (MAEs) when viewing static vs. dynamic test displays. The dynamic MAE can be exactly simulated by real motion, whereas the static MAE cannot. In addition, the magnitude of the dynamic MAE depends on the bandwidth of motion directions experienced during adaptation, whereas the static MAE does not. Evidently a stationary pattern does not directly activate the neural mechanisms affected during motion adaptation, whereas a dynamic visual display does. These results imply that the traditional explanation of the MAE needs modification.

Adaptation, Ocular↗

PubMed1992

Mitochondrial glutathione in hypermetabolic rats following burn injury and thyroid hormone administration: evidence of a selective effect on brain glutathione by burn injury.

Cerebral cortex, heart, skeletal muscle, and liver mitochondrial glutathione (GSH) levels in severely burned rats are decreased to between approximately 50% to 70% of sham-operated, normally fed controls. In semistarved rats, weight-matched with burned rats, mitochondrial GSH levels in these tissues are decreased to between approximately 70% to 91% of those in sham-operated rats. Total GSH levels in peripheral tissues and brain are decreased to approximately 60% to 65% of control levels in rats with burn injury and food restriction, suggesting a higher mitochondrial GSH turnover in burned rats than in semistarved rats, probably because of higher "stress hormone" levels in burned rats than in semistarved rats. Cerebral cortex mitochondrial GSH levels are unaffected by variations in thyroid hormone status, but liver mitochondrial GSH levels are decreased by triiodothyronine and increased by propylthiouracil. The present results suggest that mitochondrial GSH is not only regulated by the rate of GSH synthesis in the cytosol, but seems to be under hormonal influence as well; stress hormones and triiodothyronine may decrease mitochondrial GSH by increasing mitochondrial oxygen consumption with increased reactive oxygen species formation or by increasing GSH exchange between mitochondria and the cytosol. These findings may be of importance therapeutically in increasing antioxidative defenses to limit oxidative stress injury in hypermetabolic patients.

Animals↗

PubMed1992

Misdirected visual motion in the peripheral visual field.

An object moving against a textured background is accurately perceived when viewed foveally, but when viewed peripherally the object's perceived direction of motion may deviate from veridical by as much as 90 deg. The illusory direction is oblique to the orientation of the background contours, which may themselves be moving or stationary. In several experiments, we examined the boundary conditions for occurrence of the illusion and tested hypotheses concerning its basis. This illusion of perceived direction dramatizes differences in motion processing between the fovea and the periphery.

Fixation, Ocular↗

PubMed1992

The contributions of figure and ground textures to segmentation.

Several models of texture segmentation use spatial gradients in the activity of early filters to locate texture boundaries. The models assume that these filters are identical to those involved in the detection and discrimination of near threshold patterns. The models differ in how activity gradients from different types of filters are combined. We examined this question by measuring the respective contributions of a figure and a ground texture to segmentation. Vertical and horizontal line segments were used to construct two perfectly discriminable textures and these textures were used to construct four types of displays. Each display contained an obliquely oriented figure, but the displays differed in the way this figure was defined. Displays consisted of either (1) a horizontally textured figure on a blank background, (2) a blank figure on a vertically textured background, (3) a horizontally textured figure on a vertically textured background or (4) a figure with a mixed texture (50% vertical lines, 50% horizontal lines) on a blank background. In a two-alternative forced-choice experiment, observers were asked to judge the figure's orientation (right or left oblique), and the contrast of the textures was varied across trials. The resulting psychometric functions for segmentation were very similar for the four types of displays, suggesting ways in which a simple model of segmentation should be modified.

Contrast Sensitivity↗

PubMed1992

Spatial zones of binocular rivalry in central and peripheral vision.

This paper presents results from psychophysical experiments on human binocular rivalry in central and peripheral vision. Results show that the incidence of periods of exclusive visibility of a given eye's rival target increased with decreasing target size, and for a given sized target exclusive visibility increased with retinal eccentricity. Control measures confirmed that these results were not attributable solely to reduced peripheral acuity, to Troxler's effect, or to spatial frequency. We computed the minimum-sized stimulus that would lead to a criterion level of exclusive visibility of one or the other eye; this we term the spatial zone of binocular rivalry. The change in estimated size of spatial zones of rivalry with eccentricity compares favorably with estimates of human cortical magnification. We propose a model that assumes concentrically organized zones of rivalry. These zones do not function independently, but instead exhibit a high degree of mutual excitatory cooperativity. The model has multiple solutions for the foveal zone size, but the best fits predict a diameter of 5.3 or 7.3 min of visual angle; these values dovetail nicely with our empirical estimates of the foveal zone size.

Humans↗