Seeing the vision

Inner Vision: Seeing the Mind’s Eye

Does imagining a visual pattern involve the same mechanisms as actually seeing that pattern? If so, what are the functional consequences of this overlap? A new study shows that the simple act of imagining a visual pattern can change subsequent visual perception in a manner specific to the lowlevel perceptual mechanisms. This work is strong evidence that imagery involves mechanisms closely resem...

Sparkle Vision : Seeing the World through Random

This thesis studies the problem of reproducing the world lighting from a single image of an object covered with random specular microfacets on the surface. Such a reflector can be interpreted as a randomized mapping from the lighting to the image. This intrinsic randomness makes it challenging for humans to interpret the image of a specular surface. We propose a system to solve it algorithmical...

Vision Chips or Seeing Silicon

Seeing without Seeing? Degraded Conscious Vision in a Blindsight Patient

Blindsight patients, whose primary visual cortex is lesioned, exhibit preserved ability to discriminate visual stimuli presented in their "blind" field, yet report no visual awareness hereof. Blindsight is generally studied in experimental investigations of single patients, as very few patients have been given this "diagnosis". In our single case study of patient GR, we ask whether blindsight i...

Natural Vision and Mathematics: Seeing Impossibilities

The Turing-inspired Meta-Morphogenesis project investigates forms of biological information processing produced by evolution since the earliest life forms, especially information processing mechanisms that made possible the deep mathematical discoveries of Euclid, Archimedes, and other ancient mathematicians. Such mechanisms must enable perception of possibilities and constraints on possibiliti...