Friday Lunch Seminar (English)
December 15, 2023　　
12:15 〜 13:00 (JST)
at CiNet Conference Room in the CiNet bldg.

Talk Title：Role of luminance contrast on perceived depth from disparity

Pei-Yin Chen
Researcher
Brain Function Analysis and Imaging Laboratory
Center for Information and Neural Networks (CiNet)
National Institutes of Information and Communications Technology (NICT)

Host PI :  Atsushi Wada

Abstract:
In stereo perception, the visual system combines a pair of horizontally shifted images in the two eyes to generate a 3D percept. The difference in the horizontal location of the images seen by the left and the right eyes is called binocular disparity and is defined only by the geometry of a scene. Thus, the perceived depth from disparity is generally considered to be independent from luminance contrast. However, our psychophysical measurements show that luminance contrast does affect stereo perception. Such an effect cannot be explained by the existing disparity energy models because they predict no effect of luminance contrast on depth perception. Instead, we developed a model for disparity processing that incorporates contrast normalization of the neural response into the disparity energy model followed by the disparity averaging operation to account for the contrast dependence of perceived depth from disparity. Our follow-up fMRI experiment also shows disparity-modulated contrast response functions in disparity-sensitive areas (V3A, V3B, and KO), which may relate to the luminance contrast effect on perceived depth from disparity.