Trends in Cognitive Sciences
ReviewLearning to recognize objects
Section snippets
Neurophysiology
From lesion studies and cellular recording it has been proposed that the sequence of primate visual areas (V4→PIT→CIT→AIT)—often referred to as the ventral stream—solve the problem of what we are looking at. In contrast, a second stream leading dorsally and into the parietal lobe (V1→V2→V3→intraparietal areas), has been implicated in the role of deciding where that object is located2, 3, 4, 5 (Fig. 2). In particular, cells in the latter part of the ventral stream in the inferior temporal areas
Psychophysical studies
Apart from the accumulating evidence for the experience-dependent modification of neural responses, there are also ample examples in the field of human object recognition. One of the important recent developments has been the use of stimuli chosen from novel object classes. What emerged from this work was that if two views of a novel object were learned, recognition was better for new views oriented between the two training views, than for views lying outside them19, 20 (see Fig. 4). These
Representation through image features
The view-based approach to object recognition accords well with a large portion of the available neurophysiological data on face cells. However, the precise nature of this representation remains as yet unclear. Although there is good evidence that neurons represent faces through some form of distributed representation, there is neurophysiological evidence that this is sometimes at the level of complete views35, 36, 37 and sometimes at the level of facial features38, 39, 40. Representation in
Temporal continuity as a cue to invariance learning
A broadly tuned feature-based system of the type under consideration in this review, would be sufficient to perform recognition over small transformations48. However, associating images over larger shape transformations either requires separate pre-normalization for size and translation of the image, or the use of separate view-specific feature detectors that would then feed into a view-invariant detector. The use of pre-normalization is at odds with the available neurophysiological evidence,
Conclusion
Our intention in this paper has been to draw together much of the research currently underway in the field of object recognition, and to highlight the encouraging parallels between neurophysiological and psychophysical evidence in this field. In the main body of the article we have concentrated on the questions of whether and how representations of objects are learnt, reviewing studies ranging from adaptation to Mooney faces, to the fall in canonical view effects with experience. We have also
Outstanding questions
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Assumptions (i.e. priors) are known to play an important role in perception60 But what specific role do they play in object recognition? The temporal-association hypothesis is one example, but there might be others. To what extent are these priors learnt, and to what extent innate?
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This review has drawn much of its evidence from work on neurons responsive to faces. But to what extent are faces and objects related?
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Why do some cells represent faces holistically35, 36, 37, and others as features38,
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2018, Animal BehaviourCitation Excerpt :At the same time, in the human behavioural literature, theorists have argued that the underlying representation is different too. They have developed a model of face representation using a norm-based model (built around specific whole-face prototypes) rather than the feature analysers common to biological models of object recognition (Riesenhuber & Poggio, 2000; Wallis, 2013; Wallis & Bülthoff, 1999). However, their model is not universally accepted.
A priori trust inference with context-aware stereotypical deep learning
2015, Knowledge-Based SystemsA new model to study visual attention in zebrafish
2014, Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology and Biological PsychiatryCitation Excerpt :The novel object recognition (NOR) test evaluates an animal's attention that is elicited by the presentation of novel stimuli. Interest in NOR is very recent and a large proportion of the literature on cognition has been dedicated to object and visual recognition in humans, pigeons and primates (Spetch et al., 2006; Wallis and Bülthoff, 1999). The principal advantage of the NOR test is the rapid testing sequence and no necessary training other than the initial exposure session.