Search PubMed⌕ Search

SEARCH · Search PubMed

Results for “Depth Perception”

Search indexed PubMed citations on genomics, clinical trials, systematic reviews and public health. Explore titles, authors and supplied subject terms, then open the PubMed record.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 667 records · Page 37Linked to original sources

3D shape perception from combined depth cues in human visual cortex.

Our perception of the world's three-dimensional (3D) structure is critical for object recognition, navigation and planning actions. To accomplish this, the brain combines different types of visual information about depth structure, but at present, the neural architecture mediating this combination remains largely unknown. Here, we report neuroimaging correlates of human 3D shape perception from the combination of two depth cues. We measured fMRI responses while observers judged the 3D structure of two sequentially presented images of slanted planes defined by binocular disparity and perspective. We compared the behavioral and fMRI responses evoked by changes in one or both of the depth cues. fMRI responses in extrastriate areas (hMT+/V5 and lateral occipital complex), rather than responses in early retinotopic areas, reflected differences in perceived 3D shape, suggesting 'combined-cue' representations in higher visual areas. These findings provide insight into the neural circuits engaged when the human brain combines different information sources for unified 3D visual perception.

Brain Mapping↗

Psychophysical evaluation of in-situ ultrasound visualization.

We present a novel psychophysical method for evaluating ultrasonography based on Real-Time Tomographic Reflection (RTTR), in comparison to Conventional Ultrasound (CUS). The method measures the user's perception of the location of an ultrasound-imaged target independently from assessing the action employed to reach it. Three experiments were conducted with the Sonic Flashlight (SF), an RTTR device, and CUS. The first two experiments determined subjects' perception of target location with a triangulation-by-pointing task. Depth perception with the SF was comparable to direct vision, while CUS caused considerable underestimation of target depth. Binocular depth information in the SF was shown to significantly contribute to its superiority. The third experiment tested subjects in an ultrasound-guided needle insertion task. Because the SF provides visualization of the target at its actual location, subjects performed insertions faster and more accurately by using the SF rather than CUS. Furthermore, the trajectory analysis showed that insertions with the SF generally went directly to the target along the desired path, while CUS often led to a large deviation from the correct path consistent with the observed underestimation of target depth. These findings lend great promise to the use of RTTR-based imaging in clinical practice and provide precise means of assessing efficacy.

Biopsy, Needle↗

[A study of perspective vision].

The present study describes the structure of monocular depth perception using an experimental basis. It regards the traditional theory of perspective, which is a subset of descriptive geometry, only as a construction guide for flat, albeit depth eliciting, visual stimuli. The investigation starts with a definition of structure as a set with an automorphism on it. In the present context the projection of the physical stimuli onto the retina provide a suitable ground set. After suitable confinement of the stimuli to a horizontal plane, the effects of eye and head movements of the subject can be represented as projective mappings of the retinal image onto itself. The present approach represents these as visual automorphisms. They are each characterized by a special visual invariance. The automorphisms form a group which comprises the affine, the affine unimodular and the orthogonal groups (in this order) as subgroups. Experimental studies of the different invariants of these subgroups as well as the consideration of other empirical observations lead to the conclusion that the structure of monocular space perception is characterized by the affine unimodular subgroup of the projective group. There are indications that the phenomena of size constancy can be represented by affine unimodular maps instead of orthogonal (metric) maps as sometimes has been conjectured.

Attention↗

Surface discontinuity is critical in a moving observer's perception of objects' depth order and relative motion from retinal image motion.

The visual system perceptually decomposes retinal image motion into three basic components that are ecologically significant for the human observer: object depth, object motion, and self motion. Using this conceptual framework, we explored the relationship between them by examining perception of objects' depth order and relative motion during self motion. We found that the visual system obeyed what we call the parallax-sign constraint, but in different ways depending on whether the retinal image motion contained velocity discontinuity or not. When velocity discontinuity existed (e.g. in dynamic occlusion, transparent motion), the subject perceptually interpreted image motion as relative motion between surfaces with stable depth order. When velocity discontinuity did not exist, he/she perceived depth-order reversal but no relative motion. The results suggest that the existence of surface discontinuity or of multiple surfaces indexed by velocity discontinuity inhibits the reversal of global depth order.

Depth Perception↗

[Visual distortions and depersonalization-de-realization syndrome].

Disturbances of visual perception like micropsia, macropsia, teleopsia, pelopsia, metamorphopsia or loss of stereoscopic depth perception are usually considered in ophthalmology as symptoms of retinopathy, especially maculopathy or disorders of binocularity. Differential diagnostic considerations include disorders like migraine and epilepsy but not the visual disturbance pertaining to the depersonalization-de-realization syndrome, although the above-mentioned symptoms are more prevalent in this psychogenic disorder. This article gives a review of depersonalization-de-realization in order to enable the ophthalmologist to include this syndrome into his diagnostic considerations.

Depersonalization↗

On the late invention of the stereoscope.

It was not until 1838, when Wheatstone published his account of the stereoscope, that stereoscopic depth perception entered into the body of binocular phenomena. It is argued that the stereoscope was not invented earlier because the phenomenon of stereopsis based on disparity had not been adequately described. This was the case despite the fact that there had been earlier descriptions of tasks that could be performed better with two eyes than with one; the perceptual deficits attendant upon the loss of one eye had been remarked upon; analyses of the projections to each eye were commonplace, and binocular disparities were accurately illustrated; moreover, binocular microscopes and telescopes had been made over a century earlier. Theories of binocular vision were generally confined to accounting for singleness of vision with two eyes, and the concepts employed to account for this were visible direction, corresponding retinal points, and union in the brain. The application of these concepts inhibited any consideration of disparities, other than for yielding diplopia. When perception of the third dimension was addressed by Berkeley at the beginning of the eighteenth century, it was in the context of monocular vision and binocular convergence. Thereafter visual direction became the province for binocular vision and it was analysed in terms of geometrical optics, whereas visual distance was examined in the context of learned associations between vision and touch. This artificial division was challenged initially with respect to visual direction and later with respect to stereopsis. An additional factor delaying the invention of the stereoscope was that experiments on binocular vision generally involved abnormal convergence on extended objects. Wheatstone's accidental observation of stereopsis was under artificial conditions in which disparity alone defined the binocular depth perceived. Once invented the stereoscope was enthusiastically embraced by students of vision. It is suggested that the ease with which retinal disparity could be manipulated in stereopairs has led to an exaggeration of its importance in space perception. "The appearances, which are by this simple instrument rendered so obvious, may be easily inferred from the established laws of perspective; for the same object in relief is, when viewed by a different eye, seen from the two points of sight at a distance from each other equal to the line joining the two eyes. Yet they seem to have escaped the attention of every philosopher and artist who has treated of the subjects of vision and perspective." (Wheatstone 1838, page 371).

Depth Perception↗

Inertia and memory in ambiguous visual perception.

Perceptual multistability during ambiguous visual perception is an important clue to neural dynamics. We examined perceptual switching during ambiguous depth perception using a Necker cube stimulus, and also during binocular rivalry. Analysis of perceptual switching time series using variance-sample size analysis, spectral analysis and time series shuffling shows that switching times behave as a 1/f noise and possess very long range correlations. The long memory feature contrasts sharply with the traditional satiation models of multistability, where the memory is not incorporated, as well as with recently published models of multistability and neural processing, where memory is excluded. On the other hand, the long memory feature favors the concept of "dynamic core" or coalition of neurons, where neurons form transient coalitions. Perceptual switching then corresponds to replacement of one coalition of neurons by another. The inertia and memory measures the stability of a coalition: a strong and stable coalition has to be won over by another similarly strong and stable coalition, resulting in long switching times. The complicated transient dynamics of competing coalitions of neurons may be addressable using a combination of functional imaging, measurement of frequency-tagged magnetoencephalography and frequency-tagged encephalography, simultaneous recordings of groups of neurons in many areas of the brain, and concepts from statistical mechanics and nonlinear dynamics theory.

Data Interpretation, Statistical↗

The effects of different viewing conditions on performance in simulated minimal access surgery.

This study aimed to assess performance in simulated minimal access surgery (MAS) tasks under a range of viewing conditions. MAS conventionally uses 2d viewing systems which produce a flat image. However, 3d viewing systems which produce stereoscopic depth information should in principle lead to better depth perception, and improve performance on tasks which require appropriate spatial representation of layout and depth. The study compared a novel 3d viewing system with a state of the art 2d viewing system and a direct viewing condition ('open surgery') as a point of reference. Tasks included pulling and cutting of threads using standard surgical instruments. Medical students (n = 16) were allocated to viewing conditions according to a Latin square and carried out 120 tasks each. Assessment was by means of a 3d movement tracking device providing a number of performance parameters (time on task, velocity, number of movements, distance travelled). In addition instrument movement was video-recorded and analysed by four observers to validate the tracking device. Results from tracking data and observer data were highly correlated (r > 0.85). While open surgery naturally scored highest, the key finding was the clearly superior performance in the 3d condition compared to 2d. Thus modern 3d viewing systems can improve performance in a realistic task.

Adult↗

The right cerebral hemisphere: emotion, music, visual-spatial skills, body-image, dreams, and awareness.

Based on a review of numerous studies conducted on normal, neurosurgical and brain-injured individuals, the right cerebral hemisphere appears to be dominant in the perception and identification of environmental and nonverbal sounds; the analysis of geometric and visual space (e.g., depth perception, visual closure); somesthesis, stereognosis, the maintenance of the body image; the production of dreams during REM sleep; the perception of most aspects of musical stimuli; and the comprehension and expression of prosodic, melodic, visual, facial, and verbal emotion. When the right hemisphere is damaged a variety of cognitive abnormalities may result, including hemi-inattention and neglect, prosopagnosia, constructional apraxia, visual-perceptual disturbances, and agnosia for environmental, musical, and emotional sounds. Similarly, a myriad of affective abnormalities may occur, including indifference, depression, hysteria, gross social-emotional disinhibition, florid manic excitement, childishness, euphoria, impulsivity, and abnormal sexual behavior. Patients may become delusional, engage in the production of bizzare confabulations and experience a host of somatic disturbances such as pain and body-perceptual distortions. Based on studies of normal and "split-brain" functioning, it also appears that the right hemisphere maintains a highly developed social-emotional mental system and can independently perceive, recall and act on certain memories and experiences without the aid or active reflective participation of the left. This leads to situations in which the right and left halves of the brain sometime act in an uncooperative fashion, which gives rise to inter-manual and intra-psychic conflicts.

Aphasia↗

Interrelation of kinetic and stereoscopic depth: behavior and physiology in vertebrates.

The target article gathers compelling behavioral evidence that motion parallax provides depth information in a variety of animal species. A more general evaluation of kinetic depth cues subserving depth perception would call attention to recent studies in monkeys, demonstrating the interrelation of kinetic and stereoscopic depth cues both on a behavioral and physiological level. Furthermore, it is argued that binocularity in birds has a clear function in stereopsis.

Journal Article↗