Magnitude of perceived change in natural images may be linearly proportional to differences in neuronal firing rates

Tolhurst, David J. and To, Michelle P. S. and Chirimuuta, Mazviita and Troscianko, Tom and Chua, Pei-Ying and Lovell, P. George (2010) Magnitude of perceived change in natural images may be linearly proportional to differences in neuronal firing rates. Seeing and Perceiving, 23 (4). pp. 349-372. ISSN 1878-4755

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Abstract

We are studying how people perceive naturalistic suprathreshold changes in the colour, size, shape or location of items in images of natural scenes, using magnitude estimation ratings to characterise the sizes of the perceived changes in coloured photographs. We have implemented a computational model that tries to explain observers' ratings of these naturalistic differences between image pairs. We model the action-potential firing rates of millions of neurons, having linear and non-linear summation behaviour closely modelled on real VI neurons. The numerical parameters of the model's sigmoidal transducer function are set by optimising the same model to experiments on contrast discrimination (contrast 'dippers') on monochrome photographs of natural scenes. The model, optimised on a stimulus-intensity domain in an experiment reminiscent of the Weber-Fechner relation, then produces tolerable predictions of the ratings for most kinds of naturalistic image change. Importantly, rating rises roughly linearly with the model's numerical output, which represents differences in neuronal firing rate in response to the two images under comparison; this implies that rating is proportional to the neuronal response.

Item Type:
Journal Article
Journal or Publication Title:
Seeing and Perceiving
Uncontrolled Keywords:
/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/2700
Subjects:
?? PHOTIC STIMULATIONMEMORYCONTRAST SENSITIVITYNEURONSHUMANSDISCRIMINATION (PSYCHOLOGY)MODELS, THEORETICALMEDICINE(ALL) ??
ID Code:
65484
Deposited By:
Deposited On:
09 Jul 2013 08:34
Refereed?:
Yes
Published?:
Published
Last Modified:
18 Sep 2023 00:42