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Author Olivier Penacchio; Xavier Otazu; Arnold J Wilkings; Sara M. Haigh edit  url
openurl 
  Title A mechanistic account of visual discomfort Type Journal Article
  Year 2023 Publication (up) Frontiers in Neuroscience Abbreviated Journal FN  
  Volume 17 Issue Pages  
  Keywords  
  Abstract Much of the neural machinery of the early visual cortex, from the extraction of local orientations to contextual modulations through lateral interactions, is thought to have developed to provide a sparse encoding of contour in natural scenes, allowing the brain to process efficiently most of the visual scenes we are exposed to. Certain visual stimuli, however, cause visual stress, a set of adverse effects ranging from simple discomfort to migraine attacks, and epileptic seizures in the extreme, all phenomena linked with an excessive metabolic demand. The theory of efficient coding suggests a link between excessive metabolic demand and images that deviate from natural statistics. Yet, the mechanisms linking energy demand and image spatial content in discomfort remain elusive. Here, we used theories of visual coding that link image spatial structure and brain activation to characterize the response to images observers reported as uncomfortable in a biologically based neurodynamic model of the early visual cortex that included excitatory and inhibitory layers to implement contextual influences. We found three clear markers of aversive images: a larger overall activation in the model, a less sparse response, and a more unbalanced distribution of activity across spatial orientations. When the ratio of excitation over inhibition was increased in the model, a phenomenon hypothesised to underlie interindividual differences in susceptibility to visual discomfort, the three markers of discomfort progressively shifted toward values typical of the response to uncomfortable stimuli. Overall, these findings propose a unifying mechanistic explanation for why there are differences between images and between observers, suggesting how visual input and idiosyncratic hyperexcitability give rise to abnormal brain responses that result in visual stress.  
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  Notes NEUROBIT Approved no  
  Call Number Admin @ si @ POW2023 Serial 3886  
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Author Arash Akbarinia; C. Alejandro Parraga edit   pdf
doi  openurl
  Title Colour Constancy Beyond the Classical Receptive Field Type Journal Article
  Year 2018 Publication (up) IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence Abbreviated Journal TPAMI  
  Volume 40 Issue 9 Pages 2081 - 2094  
  Keywords  
  Abstract The problem of removing illuminant variations to preserve the colours of objects (colour constancy) has already been solved by the human brain using mechanisms that rely largely on centre-surround computations of local contrast. In this paper we adopt some of these biological solutions described by long known physiological findings into a simple, fully automatic, functional model (termed Adaptive Surround Modulation or ASM). In ASM, the size of a visual neuron's receptive field (RF) as well as the relationship with its surround varies according to the local contrast within the stimulus, which in turn determines the nature of the centre-surround normalisation of cortical neurons higher up in the processing chain. We modelled colour constancy by means of two overlapping asymmetric Gaussian kernels whose sizes are adapted based on the contrast of the surround pixels, resembling the change of RF size. We simulated the contrast-dependent surround modulation by weighting the contribution of each Gaussian according to the centre-surround contrast. In the end, we obtained an estimation of the illuminant from the set of the most activated RFs' outputs. Our results on three single-illuminant and one multi-illuminant benchmark datasets show that ASM is highly competitive against the state-of-the-art and it even outperforms learning-based algorithms in one case. Moreover, the robustness of our model is more tangible if we consider that our results were obtained using the same parameters for all datasets, that is, mimicking how the human visual system operates. These results might provide an insight on how dynamical adaptation mechanisms contribute to make object's colours appear constant to us.  
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  Notes NEUROBIT; 600.068; 600.072 Approved no  
  Call Number Admin @ si @ AkP2018a Serial 2990  
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Author Hans Stadthagen-Gonzalez; M. Carmen Parafita; C. Alejandro Parraga; Markus F. Damian edit   pdf
url  openurl
  Title Testing alternative theoretical accounts of code-switching: Insights from comparative judgments of adjective noun order Type Journal Article
  Year 2019 Publication (up) International journal of bilingualism: interdisciplinary studies of multilingual behaviour Abbreviated Journal IJB  
  Volume 23 Issue 1 Pages 200-220  
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  Abstract Objectives:
Spanish and English contrast in adjective–noun word order: for example, brown dress (English) vs. vestido marrón (‘dress brown’, Spanish). According to the Matrix Language model (MLF) word order in code-switched sentences must be compatible with the word order of the matrix language, but working within the minimalist program (MP), Cantone and MacSwan arrived at the descriptive generalization that the position of the noun phrase relative to the adjective is determined by the adjective’s language. Our aim is to evaluate the predictions derived from these two models regarding adjective–noun order in Spanish–English code-switched sentences.
Methodology:
We contrasted the predictions from both models regarding the acceptability of code-switched sentences with different adjective–noun orders that were compatible with the MP, the MLF, both, or none. Acceptability was assessed in Experiment 1 with a 5-point Likert and in Experiment 2 with a 2-Alternative Forced Choice (2AFC) task.
 
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  Notes NEUROBIT; no menciona Approved no  
  Call Number Admin @ si @ SPP2019 Serial 3242  
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Author Arash Akbarinia; C. Alejandro Parraga edit   pdf
url  openurl
  Title Feedback and Surround Modulated Boundary Detection Type Journal Article
  Year 2018 Publication (up) International Journal of Computer Vision Abbreviated Journal IJCV  
  Volume 126 Issue 12 Pages 1367–1380  
  Keywords Boundary detection; Surround modulation; Biologically-inspired vision  
  Abstract Edges are key components of any visual scene to the extent that we can recognise objects merely by their silhouettes. The human visual system captures edge information through neurons in the visual cortex that are sensitive to both intensity discontinuities and particular orientations. The “classical approach” assumes that these cells are only responsive to the stimulus present within their receptive fields, however, recent studies demonstrate that surrounding regions and inter-areal feedback connections influence their responses significantly. In this work we propose a biologically-inspired edge detection model in which orientation selective neurons are represented through the first derivative of a Gaussian function resembling double-opponent cells in the primary visual cortex (V1). In our model we account for four kinds of receptive field surround, i.e. full, far, iso- and orthogonal-orientation, whose contributions are contrast-dependant. The output signal from V1 is pooled in its perpendicular direction by larger V2 neurons employing a contrast-variant centre-surround kernel. We further introduce a feedback connection from higher-level visual areas to the lower ones. The results of our model on three benchmark datasets show a big improvement compared to the current non-learning and biologically-inspired state-of-the-art algorithms while being competitive to the learning-based methods.  
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  Notes NEUROBIT; 600.068; 600.072 Approved no  
  Call Number Admin @ si @ AkP2018b Serial 2991  
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Author Xim Cerda-Company; C. Alejandro Parraga; Xavier Otazu edit   pdf
url  doi
openurl 
  Title Which tone-mapping operator is the best? A comparative study of perceptual quality Type Journal Article
  Year 2018 Publication (up) Journal of the Optical Society of America A Abbreviated Journal JOSA A  
  Volume 35 Issue 4 Pages 626-638  
  Keywords  
  Abstract Tone-mapping operators (TMO) are designed to generate perceptually similar low-dynamic range images from high-dynamic range ones. We studied the performance of fifteen TMOs in two psychophysical experiments where observers compared the digitally-generated tone-mapped images to their corresponding physical scenes. All experiments were performed in a controlled environment and the setups were
designed to emphasize different image properties: in the first experiment we evaluated the local relationships among intensity-levels, and in the second one we evaluated global visual appearance among physical scenes and tone-mapped images, which were presented side by side. We ranked the TMOs according
to how well they reproduced the results obtained in the physical scene. Our results show that ranking position clearly depends on the adopted evaluation criteria, which implies that, in general, these tone-mapping algorithms consider either local or global image attributes but rarely both. Regarding the
question of which TMO is the best, KimKautz [1] and Krawczyk [2] obtained the better results across the different experiments. We conclude that a more thorough and standardized evaluation criteria is needed to study all the characteristics of TMOs, as there is ample room for improvement in future developments.
 
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  Notes NEUROBIT; 600.120; 600.128 Approved no  
  Call Number Admin @ si @ CPO2018 Serial 3088  
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