Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, USA.
Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA.
Neuropsychologia. 2022 Jan 7;164:108092. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2021.108092. Epub 2021 Nov 18.
Shape perception is crucial for object recognition. However, it remains unknown exactly how shape information is represented and used by the visual system. Here, we tested the hypothesis that the visual system represents object shape via a skeletal structure. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and representational similarity analysis (RSA), we found that a model of skeletal similarity explained significant unique variance in the response profiles of V3 and LO. Moreover, the skeletal model remained predictive in these regions even when controlling for other models of visual similarity that approximate low-to high-level visual features (i.e., Gabor-jet, GIST, HMAX, and AlexNet), and across different surface forms, a manipulation that altered object contours while preserving the underlying skeleton. Together, these findings shed light on shape processing in human vision, as well as the computational properties of V3 and LO. We discuss how these regions may support two putative roles of shape skeletons: namely, perceptual organization and object recognition.
形状感知对于物体识别至关重要。然而，视觉系统如何表示和使用形状信息仍不清楚。在这里，我们测试了一个假设，即视觉系统通过骨骼结构来表示物体形状。使用功能磁共振成像（fMRI）和表示相似性分析（RSA），我们发现骨骼相似性模型可以解释 V3 和 LO 反应谱中显著的独特方差。此外，即使在控制其他视觉相似性模型（即 Gabor-jet、GIST、HMAX 和 AlexNet，它们近似于低到高的视觉特征）后，骨骼模型在这些区域仍然具有预测性，并且在不同的表面形式下，这种操作改变了物体轮廓，同时保留了潜在的骨骼。这些发现共同揭示了人类视觉中的形状处理，以及 V3 和 LO 的计算特性。我们讨论了这些区域如何支持形状骨骼的两个假设作用：即感知组织和物体识别。
