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Published January 11, 1996 | public
Journal Article

Early computation of shape and reflectance in the visual system

Abstract

A COMPELLING sense of three-dimensional shape may be conveyed by the photograph of an object. Cues such as contour, shading, perspective and occlusion, to name a few, contribute to this percept. Psychophysical experiments suggest that certain aspects of three-dimensional shape are computed rapidly and in parallel by the visual system. Here we report that reflectance is also computed rapidly; moreover, it is the apparent reflectance, rather than brightness or perceptual three-dimensional shape, that is the primary basis for discrimination during the early stages of visual processing.

Additional Information

© 1996 Nature Publishing Group. Received 27 July; accepted 13 October 1995. We thank J. Braun and J. Malik for suggestions and B. Julesz, I. Kovacs, T. Sejnowski, S. Shimojo and T. Watanabe for their contributions. This research was supposed by the California Institute of Technology, an NSF National Young Investigator Award to P.P., and NSF Fellowship and Training Grant for J.Y.S., and the NSF Center for Neuromorphic Systems Engineering at Caltech.

Additional details

Created:
August 20, 2023
Modified:
October 26, 2023