Perceptual Neuroscience

This monumental work creates a new subdiscipline: perceptual neuroscience. Mountcastle gathers information from a vast number of sources reaching back through two centuries, from phylogenetic, comparative, and neuroanatomical studies of the neocortex to rhythmicity and synchronization in neocortical networks and inquiries into the binding problem.

Over the past decade, the integration of psychology and fine art has sparked growing academic interest among researchers of these disciplines. The author, both a psychologist and artist, offers up a unique merger and perspective of these fields. Through the production of fine art, which is directly informed by neuroscientific and optical processes, this volume aims to fill a gap in the literature and understanding of the creation and perception of the grid image created as a work of art. The grid image is employed (for reasons discussed in the text) to illustrate more general processes associated with the integration of vision, visual distortion, and painting. Existing at the intersection of perceptual neuroscience, psychology, fine art and art history, this volume concerns the act of painting and the process of looking. More specifically, the book examines vision and the effects of visual impairment and how these can be interpreted through painting within a theoretical framework of visual neuroscience.

Anatomically, the central nervous system looks remarkably symmetrical--from the relatively simple structures of the spinal cord to the extensively convoluted folds of the cerebral hemispheres. At the functional level, however, there are striking differences between the left and right hemispheres. Although popular writings attribute language abilities to the left hemisphere and spatial abilities to the right, differences in hemispheric function appear to be more subtle. According to Ivry and Robertson, asymmetries over a wide range of perceptual tasks reflect a difference in strength rather than kind, with both hemispheres contributing to the performance of complex tasks, whether linguistic or spatial. After an historical introduction, the authors offer a cognitive neuroscience perspective on hemispheric specialization in perception. They propose that the two hemispheres differ in how they filter task-relevant sensory information. Building on the idea that the hemispheres construct asymmetric representations, the hypothesis provides a novel account of many laterality effects. A notable feature of the authors' work is their attempt to incorporate hemispheric specialization in vision, audition, music, and language within a common framework. In support of their theory, they review studies involving both healthy and neurologically impaired individuals. They also provide a series of simulations to demonstrate the underlying computational principles of their theory. Their work thus describes both the cognitive and neurological architecture of hemispheric asymmetries in perception.

This book deals with philosophical aspects regarding the perception of spatial relationships in two and three-dimensional art. It provides a structural understanding of how art is perceived within the space created by the artwork, and employs a mapping sentence and partial order mereology to model perceptual structure. It reviews the writing of philosophers such as Paul Crowther and art theorists such as Krauss to establish the need for this research. The ontological model established Paul Crowther is used to guide an interactive account of his ontology in the interpretations of the perceptual process of three-dimensional abstract art to allow the formulation of a more comprehensive philosophical account. The book uniquely combines structuralist and post-structuralist approaches to artistic perception and understanding with a conceptual structure from facet theory, which is clarified with the help of a mapping sentence and partial order mereology.

A comprehensive and integrated introduction to the phenomena and theories of perceptual learning, focusing on the visual domain. Practice or training in perceptual tasks improves the quality of perceptual performance, often by a substantial amount. This improvement is called perceptual learning (in contrast to learning in the cognitive or motor domains), and it has become an active area of research of both theoretical and practical significance. This book offers a comprehensive introduction to the phenomena and theories of perceptual learning, focusing on the visual domain.

This book explores visual object recognition and introduces a collaborative model, codified as the "Perceptual Expertise Network" (PEN). It focuses on delineating the principles of high-level visual learning that can account for how different object categories are processed and associated with spatially localized activity in the primate brain. It address questions such as how expertise develops, whether there are different kinds of experts, whether some disorders such as autism or prosopagnosia can be understood as a lack or loss of expertise, and how conceptual and perceptual information interact when experts recognize and categorize objects. The research and results that have been generated by these questions are presented here, along with other questions, background information, and extant issues that have emerged from recent studies.

The best example of filling-in involves the blind spot, a region of the retina devoid of photoreceptors. Remarkably, the region of visual space corresponding to the blind spot is not perceived as a dark region in space, but instead as having the same color and texture as the surrounding background; hence the expression "filling in." While this type of perceptual completion phenomenon is common in the visual domain, it is argued by the leading scientists who contribute to this book that forms of filling-in also take place in other sensory modalities, including the auditory, somatosensory, and motor systems. In a concluding chapter an integrative approach is taken, which attempts to provide a common framework for completion phenomena occurring on a fast time scale, and cortical reorganization in sensory and motor cortex induced by peripheral damage or skill learning taking place on a slower time scale. It is proposed that systematic changes in the interplay between inhibitory and excitatory inputs permit cortical neurons to become driven by new sources of input, which, in addition to initial perceptual consequences can lead to a long-term structural reorganization of cortex. This book represents a truly interdisciplinary approach to neuroscience, with chapters covering computational modeling, visual psychophysics, functional brain imaging, single-cell physiology, and clinical patient cases. It will be of interest to researchers and graduate students in systems neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience, vision science, neuroimaging, perceptual psychology, computational neuroscience, and philosophy of mind.

This monograph presents a clear account of when and how attentional processes can shape perceptual experience. This argument is based on the prediction-error minimization model of the mind. The author believes that the topic of attention should take a more central role in the debate about the influence of cognition on perception. Inside, he shows how this can be possible. The hypothesis that cognition may shape perceptual experience has been traditionally labeled as the cognitive penetrability of perceptual experience. Cognitive penetrability is relevant for several debates in philosophy and cognitive science. It tackles the possibility of gathering genuine knowledge on the basis of perceptual information about the world delivered by sensory channels. The problem, the author notes, is that if our previously acquired belief can shape current perceptual experiences, such experiences cannot serve as an adequate source of justification in retaining those beliefs or even forming new ones. He argues that cognitive penetration may sometimes happen through attentional processes, but that its occurrence need not undermine perceptual justification. The book provides an overview of the cognitive penetrability debate. The author discusses evidence that supports the occurrence of this phenomenon. Overall, this investigation offers readers a philosophical discussion of attention based on the biased-competition theory. It argues that attention is a property of mental representations that emerges from a metacognitive competition process.