CRCNS - Higher-Level Neural Specialization/Natural Shape

描述（由申请人提供）：长期目标：发现高级视觉皮层如何专门利用我们自然环境的形状统计。自然物体有一个非常具体的统计结构，这是由我们世界的条件所强加的：重力、光线、物理、生物、建筑和标准观察者的观点。视觉系统是高度专业化的，利用自然形状统计的优势，并专注于最有用和可用的形状信息。这种专业化有助于使生物视觉远远优于当前基于计算机的视觉系统。理解这种专门化将有助于揭示人类物体视觉的神经机制，并可能为基于计算机的视觉识别提供新的策略。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Long-term Objective: To discover how higher-level visual cortex is specialized to exploit the shape statistics of our natural environment. Natural objects have a very specific statistical structure imposed by conditions in our world: gravity, lighting, physics, biology, architecture, and standard observer viewpoints. The visual system is highly specialized to take advantage of natural shape statistics and focus on the most useful and available shape information. This specialization helps make biological vision far superior to current computer-based vision systems. Understanding this specialization will shed new light on neural mechanisms of human object vision and could suggest new strategies for computer-based visual recognition. Specific Aims: (1) Use high-throughput computer-based photographic image analysis to characterize shape statistics of natural objects, (2) Measure the distribution of tuning for the same quantitative shape measures in neurons recorded from high-level ventral pathway visual cortex of awake macaque monkeys, (3) Compare the resulting image statistics and neural tuning distributions in order to discover how high-level visual cortex is adapted to natural image structure. Public Health Relevance: This novel analysis of brain specialization for natural shape statistics provides a fresh approach to understanding the neural mechanisms of human object vision. Understanding these mechanisms will elucidate disease states in which visual object perception is compromised, suggest new strategies for designing computer-based vision systems that could compensate for loss of object vision, and could ultimately provide the critical knowledge base for designing and optimizing microelectrode-based devices to provide prosthetic sensory inputs to higher-level visual cortex.