Physical Structure of Perception and Computation Group, Department of Informatics, Bioengineering, Robotics and System Engineering, University of Genoa, 16145, Genoa, Italy.
Sci Rep. 2017 Mar 20;7:44800. doi: 10.1038/srep44800.
Depth perception in near viewing strongly relies on the interpretation of binocular retinal disparity to obtain stereopsis. Statistical regularities of retinal disparities have been claimed to greatly impact on the neural mechanisms that underlie binocular vision, both to facilitate perceptual decisions and to reduce computational load. In this paper, we designed a novel and unconventional approach in order to assess the role of fixation strategy in conditioning the statistics of retinal disparity. We integrated accurate realistic three-dimensional models of natural scenes with binocular eye movement recording, to obtain accurate ground-truth statistics of retinal disparity experienced by a subject in near viewing. Our results evidence how the organization of human binocular visual system is finely adapted to the disparity statistics characterizing actual fixations, thus revealing a novel role of the active fixation strategy over the binocular visual functionality. This suggests an ecological explanation for the intrinsic preference of stereopsis for a close central object surrounded by a far background, as an early binocular aspect of the figure-ground segregation process.
深度知觉在近距离观察中强烈依赖于对双眼视网膜视差的解释，以获得立体视觉。视网膜视差的统计规律据说是对视差背后的神经机制有重大影响，不仅可以促进感知决策，还可以降低计算负荷。在本文中，我们设计了一种新颖而非常规的方法，以评估注视策略在调节视网膜视差统计方面的作用。我们将自然场景的精确现实三维模型与双眼眼球运动记录相结合，以获得近距离观察时受试者实际经历的视网膜视差的准确真实统计数据。我们的结果证明了人类双眼视觉系统的组织是如何精细地适应了特征实际注视的视差统计，从而揭示了主动注视策略在双眼视觉功能中的新作用。这为立体视对被远背景包围的近距离中央物体的固有偏好提供了一种生态解释，这是图形-背景分离过程的早期双眼方面。
