Albright Thomas D, Stoner Gene R
Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Systems Neurobiology Laboratories, The Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, California 92037, USA.
Annu Rev Neurosci. 2002;25:339-79. doi: 10.1146/annurev.neuro.25.112701.142900. Epub 2002 Mar 27.
The visual image formed on the retina represents an amalgam of visual scene properties, including the reflectances of surfaces, their relative positions, and the type of illumination. The challenge facing the visual system is to extract the "meaning" of the image by decomposing it into its environmental causes. For each local region of the image, that extraction of meaning is only possible if information from other regions is taken into account. Of particular importance is a set of image cues revealing surface occlusion and/or lighting conditions. These information-rich cues direct the perceptual interpretation of other more ambiguous image regions. This context-dependent transformation from image to perception has profound-but frequently under-appreciated-implications for neurophysiological studies of visual processing: To demonstrate that neuronal responses are correlated with perception of visual scene properties, rather than visual image features, neuronal sensitivity must be assessed in varied contexts that differentially influence perceptual interpretation. We review a number of recent studies that have used this context-based approach to explore the neuronal bases of visual scene perception.
形成于视网膜上的视觉图像代表了视觉场景属性的混合体，包括表面的反射率、它们的相对位置以及照明类型。视觉系统面临的挑战是通过将图像分解为其环境成因来提取图像的“意义”。对于图像的每个局部区域，只有考虑来自其他区域的信息，才有可能提取意义。一组揭示表面遮挡和/或光照条件的图像线索尤为重要。这些信息丰富的线索指导对其他更模糊图像区域的感知解释。这种从图像到感知的上下文相关转换对视觉处理的神经生理学研究具有深刻但常常未被充分认识的影响：为了证明神经元反应与视觉场景属性的感知相关，而不是与视觉图像特征相关，必须在不同的上下文中评估神经元敏感性，这些上下文会对感知解释产生不同影响。我们回顾了最近一些使用这种基于上下文的方法来探索视觉场景感知的神经基础的研究。
