Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089, USA.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2013 Aug 20;110(34):14000-5. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1308246110. Epub 2013 Aug 5.
To recognize objects quickly and accurately, mature visual systems build invariant object representations that generalize across a range of novel viewing conditions (e.g., changes in viewpoint). To date, however, the origins of this core cognitive ability have not yet been established. To examine how invariant object recognition develops in a newborn visual system, I raised chickens from birth for 2 weeks within controlled-rearing chambers. These chambers provided complete control over all visual object experiences. In the first week of life, subjects' visual object experience was limited to a single virtual object rotating through a 60° viewpoint range. In the second week of life, I examined whether subjects could recognize that virtual object from novel viewpoints. Newborn chickens were able to generate viewpoint-invariant representations that supported object recognition across large, novel, and complex changes in the object's appearance. Thus, newborn visual systems can begin building invariant object representations at the onset of visual object experience. These abstract representations can be generated from sparse data, in this case from a visual world containing a single virtual object seen from a limited range of viewpoints. This study shows that powerful, robust, and invariant object recognition machinery is an inherent feature of the newborn brain.
为了快速、准确地识别物体，成熟的视觉系统会构建不变的物体表示，这些表示可以推广到一系列新的观察条件下（例如，视角的变化）。然而，到目前为止，这种核心认知能力的起源尚未确定。为了研究不变物体识别在新生视觉系统中是如何发展的，我在受控饲养室中从出生起饲养小鸡两周。这些饲养室可以完全控制所有的视觉物体体验。在生命的第一周，实验对象的视觉物体体验仅限于一个单一的虚拟物体在 60°视角范围内旋转。在生命的第二周，我检查了实验对象是否能从新的视角识别出那个虚拟物体。新生小鸡能够生成不变的视角表示，支持从物体外观的大、新和复杂变化中进行物体识别。因此，新生的视觉系统可以在开始接触视觉物体时开始构建不变的物体表示。这些抽象的表示可以从稀疏的数据中生成，在这种情况下，是从一个只包含从有限视角看到的单个虚拟物体的视觉世界中生成的。这项研究表明，强大、稳健和不变的物体识别机制是新生大脑的固有特征。
