Spatial and Temporal Integration In the Perception of 3D Shape

在我们的日常生活中，我们在环境中移动，抓取物体并执行一些对我们生存至关重要的动作。 这些动作看起来非常自然和轻松，尽管大脑对福尔斯落在我们眼睛上的光模式进行了极其复杂的分析，以确定周围物体的结构和形状。 这个问题很难解决，因为物体是三维的，但我们的眼睛只记录它们的二维投影（也称为视网膜图像），就像相机中的胶片一样。 大多数视觉科学家通过提出以下问题来解决这个问题：大脑如何从视网膜图像的特定区域中的特定瞬间的信息中获得物体的3D结构？ 由于视网膜上的图像是二维的，并且时间可以被添加为第三维，因此视觉刺激可以在三维空间中表示。 到目前为止进行的研究集中在如何通过视觉系统分析该时空域的局部区域的问题上，而视觉系统如何整合不同时空区域的信息的问题一直被忽视，本研究的总体目标是探讨空间-时间-空间-时间-空间的关系，在从视网膜投影恢复3D形状中的信息的时间整合。具体而言，将追求三个目标。 首先，本研究将探讨在何种方式的局部视觉处理的影响与刺激信息存在于不同的时空位置的相互作用。 其次，研究将利用刺激条件，负责空间和时间组织。第三，研究将确定不同深度信息源之间是否发生空间和时间相互作用。了解人类视觉系统如何解决这个问题不仅是视觉感知研究的一个有价值的进展，而且还可以为构建模仿我们行为和交互的机器提供新的见解。

In our daily life, we move in the environment, grab objects and perform a number of actions that are fundamental to our survival. These actions may seem very natural and effortless despite the fact that the brain performs an extremely complex analysis of the light pattern that falls on our eyes in order to determine the structure and shape of the surrounding objects. This problem is very difficult to solve since objects are three-dimensional but our eyes only register their two-dimensional projection (also called retinal image), like the film in a camera. Most vision scientists have approached this problem by asking the following question: How does the brain derive the 3D structure of objects from the information that is present in a certain instant of time in a certain region of the retinal image? Because the image on the retina is two-dimensional and time can be added as a third dimension, the visual stimulation can be represented in a three-dimensional space. The research conducted so far has focused on the problem of how local regions of this space-time domain are analyzed by the visual system, while the problem of how the visual system is capable of integrating the information contained in different spatial-temporal regions has been neglected.The overall objective of the present research project is to investigate the spatial-temporal integration of information in the recovery of 3D shape from retinal projections. In particular, three goals will be pursued. First, the research will investigate in which manner local visual processing is affected by interactions with stimulus information present in different space-time locations. Second, the research will exploit the stimulus conditions that are responsible for spatial and temporal organization. Third, the research will determine whether spatial and temporal interactions occur among different sources of depth information. Understanding how the human visual system solves this problem will not only be a valuable advance in the study of visual perception but could also produce novel insights toward the building of machines that mimic our behavior and interactions.