TY - JOUR
T1 - Running Large-Scale Simulations on the Neurorobotics Platform to Understand Vision
T2 - The Case of Visual Crowding
AU - Bornet, Alban
AU - Kaiser, Jacques
AU - Kroner, Alexander
AU - Falotico, Egidio
AU - Ambrosano, Alessandro
AU - Cantero, Kepa
AU - Herzog, Michael H.
AU - Francis, Gregory
PY - 2019/5/29
Y1 - 2019/5/29
N2 - Traditionally, human vision research has focused on specific paradigms and proposed models to explain very specific properties of visual perception. However, the complexity and scope of modern psychophysical paradigms undermine the success of this approach. For example, perception of an element strongly deteriorates when neighboring elements are presented in addition (visual crowding). As it was shown recently, the magnitude of deterioration depends not only on the directly neighboring elements but on almost all elements and their specific configuration. Hence, to fully explain human visual perception, one needs to take large parts of the visual field into account and combine all the aspects of vision that become relevant at such scale. These efforts require sophisticated and collaborative modeling. The Neurorobotics Platform (NRP) of the Human Brain Project offers a unique opportunity to connect models of all sorts of visual functions, even those developed by different research groups, into a coherently functioning system. Here, we describe how we used the NRP to connect and simulate a segmentation model, a retina model, and a saliency model to explain complex results about visual perception. The combination of models highlights the versatility of the NRP and provides novel explanations for inward-outward anisotropy in visual crowding.
AB - Traditionally, human vision research has focused on specific paradigms and proposed models to explain very specific properties of visual perception. However, the complexity and scope of modern psychophysical paradigms undermine the success of this approach. For example, perception of an element strongly deteriorates when neighboring elements are presented in addition (visual crowding). As it was shown recently, the magnitude of deterioration depends not only on the directly neighboring elements but on almost all elements and their specific configuration. Hence, to fully explain human visual perception, one needs to take large parts of the visual field into account and combine all the aspects of vision that become relevant at such scale. These efforts require sophisticated and collaborative modeling. The Neurorobotics Platform (NRP) of the Human Brain Project offers a unique opportunity to connect models of all sorts of visual functions, even those developed by different research groups, into a coherently functioning system. Here, we describe how we used the NRP to connect and simulate a segmentation model, a retina model, and a saliency model to explain complex results about visual perception. The combination of models highlights the versatility of the NRP and provides novel explanations for inward-outward anisotropy in visual crowding.
KW - visual crowding
KW - neurorobotics
KW - modeling
KW - large-scale simulation
KW - vision
KW - ATTENTION
KW - MODEL
U2 - 10.3389/fnbot.2019.00033
DO - 10.3389/fnbot.2019.00033
M3 - Article
C2 - 31191291
VL - 13
JO - Frontiers in Neurorobotics
JF - Frontiers in Neurorobotics
SN - 1662-5218
M1 - 33
ER -