Human Symmetry Perception And Its Computational Analysis

Symmetry is a fundamental principle of broad concern from the physical sciences to art and design. Much of its significance derives from the perceptual appeal of symmetry to the human brain, as testified by its universal inclusion in those icons of decor--oriental rugs. Although there have been many books on physical symmetry, none have addressed the issue of human symmetry perception. This comprehensive collection provides a wide range of approaches to the study of how we see symmetries, from evolutionary through empirical to extended theoretical treatments. The book is an invaluable resource for those concerned with the methods and analytic approaches to this challenging topic. It soon becomes evident that symmetry perception is not a simple example of neural pattern processing, since the essence of symmetry is to transcend the patterns of which it is composed. Consequently, this volume contains many novel methods relevant to the analysis of the long-range processing of mid-level vision rather than early neural filtering. It provides both a historical background and an intellectual stimulant to future developments in this lapidary field of study.

Prefer to have this written by Tyler. EW will ask him to write it.

Prefer to have this written by Tyler. EW will ask him to write it.

Perceptual organization comprises a wide range of processes such as perceptual grouping, figure-ground organization, filling-in, completion, perceptual switching, etc. Such processes are most notable in the context of shape perception but they also play a role in texture perception, lightness perception, color perception, motion perception, depth perception, etc. Perceptual organization deals with a variety of perceptual phenomena of central interest, studied from many different perspectives, including psychophysics, experimental psychology, neuropsychology, neuroimaging, neurophysiology, and computational modeling. Given its central importance in phenomenal experience, perceptual organization has also figured prominently in classic Gestalt writings on the topic, touching upon deep philosophical issues regarding mind-brain relationships and consciousness. In addition, it attracts a great deal of interest from people working in applied areas like visual art, design, architecture, music, and so forth. The Oxford Handbook of Perceptual Organization provides a broad and extensive review of the current literature, written in an accessible form for scholars and students. With chapter written by leading researchers in the field, this is the state-of-the-art reference work on this topic, and will be so for many years to come.

Perceptual organization is the neuro-cognitive process that enables us to perceive scenes as structured wholes consisting of objects arranged in space. Simplicity in Vision explores the intriguing idea that these perceived wholes are given by the simplest organizations of the scenes. Peter A. van der Helm presents a truly multidisciplinary approach to answer fundamental questions such as: Are simplest organizations sufficiently reliable to guide our actions? What is the nature of the regularities that are exploited to arrive at simplest organizations? To account for the high combinatorial capacity and speed of the perceptual organization process, he proposes transparallel processing by hyperstrings. This special form of distributed processing not only gives classical computers the extraordinary computing power that seemed reserved for quantum computers, but also explains how neuronal synchronization relates to flexible self-organizing cognitive architecture in between the relatively rigid level of neurons and the still elusive level of consciousness.

The refereed proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Computer Analysis of Images and Patterns are presented in this volume. The papers cover motion detection and tracking, medical imaging, biometrics, color, curves and surfaces beyond two dimensions, reading characters, words and lines, image segmentation, shape, image registration and matching, signal decomposition and invariants, and features and classification.

This book presents an introduction to the foundations, interpretations, and data-analytic applications of symmetry studies with an emphasis on applications in optical sciences. Symmetry studies connect group theoretic and statistical methods for data summary and inference. Readers should have an understanding of calculus and linear algebra as well as introductory statistics. The book reviews finite group theory in the introductory chapters. Computational tools used in the text are available for download in the form of Mathmaticaâ notebooks or R scripts. This book: Demonstrates the usefulness of a unified view of algebra and symmetry studies to address data-analytic questions in optics and vision science Offers a brief review of finite group theory and elements of multivariate analysis Includes various examples from diverse areas of optical science

This volume is far more than a festschrift; it is a reflection of Neisser's profound impact on theory and methodology in many subdisciplines of psychology. This book will be of value to all cognitive, developmental, and ecological psychologists.