Imperfect Bayesian inference in visual perception

Object perception as Bayesian inference.

We perceive the shapes and material properties of objects quickly and reliably despite the complexity and objective ambiguities of natural images. Typical images are highly complex because they consist of many objects embedded in background clutter. Moreover, the image features of an object are extremely variable and ambiguous owing to the effects of projection, occlusion, background clutter, a...

Bayesian sampling in visual perception.

It is well-established that some aspects of perception and action can be understood as probabilistic inferences over underlying probability distributions. In some situations, it would be advantageous for the nervous system to sample interpretations from a probability distribution rather than commit to a particular interpretation. In this study, we asked whether visual percepts correspond to sam...

Bayesian Modelling of Visual Perception

Innateness and ( Bayesian ) Visual Perception

Because innateness is such a complex and controversial issue when applied to higher level cognition, it can be useful to explore how nature and nurture interact in simpler, less controversial contexts. One such context is the study of certain aspects of visual perception—where especially rigorous models are possible, and where it is less controversial to claim that certain aspects of the visual...

Hierarchical Bayesian inference in the visual cortex.

Traditional views of visual processing suggest that early visual neurons in areas V1 and V2 are static spatiotemporal filters that extract local features from a visual scene. The extracted information is then channeled through a feedforward chain of modules in successively higher visual areas for further analysis. Recent electrophysiological recordings from early visual neurons in awake behavin...