The preferred retinal loci when the eyes converge.

The preferred retinal locus (PRL) is the position on the retina to which humans direct stimuli during fixation. In healthy normal eyes, it has been shown to be very stable across time and between different tasks. Previous measurements of the PRL have been made under monocular viewing conditions. The current study examines where the PRLs in the two eyes' retinas are when subjects fixate binocularly and whether they shift when the demand for the eyes to converge is changed. Our apparatus allows us to see exactly where binocular stimuli fell on the two retinas during binocular fixation. Thus, our technique bypasses some of the issues involved in measuring binocular alignment with subjective techniques and previous objective techniques that use conventional eye trackers. These results show that PRLs shift slightly but systematically as the demand for convergence increases. The shifts cause under-convergence (also called exo fixation disparity) for near targets. They are not large enough to cause a break in binocular fusion. The fixation disparity we observed with increasing vergence demand is similar to fixation disparity observed in previous reports.

New results in stereopsis and Listing's law.

Human eyes' optical components are misaligned. This study presents comprehensive geometric constructions in the binocular system, with the eye model incorporating the fovea that is displaced from the posterior pole and the lens that is tilted away from the eye's optical axis. It extends their previously considered horizontal misalignment with the vertical components. When the eyes' binocular posture changes, 3D spatial coordinates of the retinal disparity (iso-disparity curves), the subjective vertical horopter, and the eye's torsional orientation transformations are visualized in GeoGebra's simulations. The consequences and functional roles of vertical misalignment of the eye's optical components are explained in the following findings: (1) The classic Helmholtz theory, which states that the subjective vertical retinal meridian inclination to the retinal horizon explains the backward tilt of the perceived vertical horopter, is less relevant when the eye's optical components are misaligned. Instead, the lens vertical tilt provides the retinal vertical criterion that explains the experimentally measured vertical horopter inclination. (2) Listing's law, which originally restricts single-eye torsional positions and has imprecise binocular extensions, is formulated for binocular fixations using Euler's rotation theorem. It, however, replaces Listing's plane, which is defined for eyes looking at infinity, with the eyes muscles' natural tonus resting position corresponding to the abathic distance fixation of empirical straight frontal horopter. This new meaning of Listing's plane provides neurophysiological significance that has remained elusive.

Viewpoint adaptation revealed potential representational differences between 2D images and 3D objects.

For convenience and experimental control, cognitive science has relied largely on images as stimuli rather than the real, tangible objects encountered in the real world. Recent evidence suggests that the cognitive processing of images may differ from real objects, especially in the processing of spatial locations and actions, thought to be mediated by the dorsal visual stream. Perceptual and semantic processing in the ventral visual stream, however, has been assumed to be largely unaffected by the realism of objects. Several studies have found that one key difference accounting for differences between real objects and images is actability; however, less research has investigated another potential difference - the three-dimensional nature of real objects as conveyed by cues like binocular disparity. To investigate the extent to which perception is affected by the realism of a stimulus, we compared viewpoint adaptation when stimuli (a face or a kettle) were 2D (flat images without binocular disparity) vs. 3D (i.e., real, tangible objects or stereoscopic images with binocular disparity). For both faces and kettles, adaptation to 3D stimuli induced stronger viewpoint aftereffects than adaptation to 2D images when the adapting orientation was rightward. A computational model suggested that the difference in aftereffects could be explained by broader viewpoint tuning for 3D compared to 2D stimuli. Overall, our finding narrowed the gap between understanding the neural processing of visual images and real-world objects by suggesting that compared to 2D images, real and simulated 3D objects evoke more broadly tuned neural representations, which may result in stronger viewpoint invariance.

Weighted power summation and contrast normalization mechanisms account for short-latency eye movements to motion and disparity of sine-wave gratings and broadband visual stimuli in humans.

In this paper, we show that the model we proposed earlier to account for the disparity vergence eye movements (disparity vergence responses, or DVRs) in response to horizontal and vertical disparity steps of white noise visual stimuli also provides an excellent description of the short-latency ocular following responses (OFRs) to broadband stimuli in the visual motion domain. In addition, we reanalyzed the data and applied the model to several earlier studies that used sine-wave gratings (single or a combination of two or three gratings) and white noise stimuli. The model provides a very good account of all of these data. The model postulates that the short-latency eye movements-OFRs and DVRs-can be accounted for by the operation of two factors: an excitatory drive, determined by a weighted sum of contributions of stimulus Fourier components, scaled by a global contrast normalization mechanism. The output of the operation of these two factors is then nonlinearly scaled by the total contrast of the stimulus. Despite different roles of disparity (horizontal and vertical) and motion signals in visual scene analyses, the earliest processing stages of these different signals appear to be very similar.

Pupillometry indexes ocular dominance plasticity.

Short-term monocular deprivation in normally sighted adult humans produces a transient shift of ocular dominance, boosting the deprived eye. This effect has been documented with both perceptual tests and through physiological recordings, but no previous study simultaneously measured physiological responses and the perceptual effects of deprivation. Here we propose an integrated experimental paradigm that combines binocular rivalry with pupillometry, to introduce an objective physiological index of ocular dominance plasticity, acquired concurrently with perceptual testing. Ten participants reported the perceptual dynamics of binocular rivalry, while we measured pupil diameter. Stimuli were a white and a black disk, each presented monocularly. Rivalry dynamics and pupil-size traces were compared before and after 2 h of monocular deprivation, achieved by applying a translucent patch over the dominant eye. Consistent with prior research, we observed that monocular deprivation boosts the deprived-eye signal and consequently increases ocular dominance. In line with previous studies, we also observed subtle but systematic modulations of pupil size that tracked alternations between exclusive dominance phases of the black or white disk. Following monocular deprivation, the amplitude of these pupil-size modulations increased, which is consistent with the post-deprivation boost of the deprived eye and the increase of ocular dominance. This provides evidence that deprivation impacts the effective strength of monocular visual stimuli, coherently affecting perceptual reports and the automatic and unconscious regulation of pupil diameter. Our results show that a combined paradigm of binocular rivalry and pupillometry gives new insights into the physiological mechanisms underlying deprivation effects.

Binocular receptive-field construction in the primary visual cortex.

ON and OFF thalamic afferents from the two eyes converge in the primary visual cortex to form binocular receptive fields. The receptive fields need to be diverse to sample our visual world but also similar across eyes to achieve binocular fusion. It is currently unknown how the cortex balances these competing needs between receptive-field diversity and similarity. Our results demonstrate that receptive fields in the cat visual cortex are binocularly matched with exquisite precision for retinotopy, orientation/direction preference, orientation/direction selectivity, response latency, and ON-OFF polarity/structure. Specifically, the average binocular mismatches in retinotopy and ON-OFF structure are tightly restricted to 1/20 and 1/5 of the average receptive-field size but are still large enough to generate all types of binocular disparity tuning. Based on these results, we conclude that cortical receptive fields are binocularly matched with the high precision needed to facilitate binocular fusion while allowing restricted mismatches to process visual depth.

The role of pattern coherence in interocular grouping during binocular rivalry: Insights from individual differences.

Interocular grouping during binocular rivalry occurs when two images presented to each eye combine into a coherent pattern. The experience of interocular grouping is thought to be influenced by both eye-of-origin, which involves excitatory lateral connections among monocular neurons, and pattern coherence, which results from top-down intervention from higher visual areas. However, it remains unclear which factor plays a more significant role in the interocularly-grouped percepts during binocular rivalry. The current study employed an individual difference approach to investigate whether grouping dynamics are mainly determined by eye-of-origin or pattern coherence. We found that participants who perceived interocularly-driven coherent percepts for a longer duration also tended to experience longer periods of monocularly-driven coherent percepts. In contrast, participants who experienced non-coherent piecemeal percepts for an extended duration in conventional rivalry also had longer duration of non-coherent percepts in the interocular coherence setting. This individual differences in experiencing interocular grouping suggest that pattern coherence exerts a stronger influence on grouping dynamics during binocular rivalry compared to eye-of-origin factors.

Temporal mechanisms in frontoparallel stereomotion revealed by individual differences analysis.

Masking experiments, using vertical and horizontal sinusoidal depth corrugations, have suggested the existence of more than two spatial-frequency disparity mechanisms. This result was confirmed through an individual differences approach. Here, using factor analytic techniques, we want to investigate the existence of independent temporal mechanisms in frontoparallel stereoscopic (cyclopean) motion. To construct stereomotion, we used sinusoidal depth corrugations obtained with dynamic random-dot stereograms. Thus, no luminance motion was present monocularly. We measured disparity thresholds for drifting vertical (up-down) and horizontal (left-right) sinusoidal corrugations of 0.4 cyc/deg at 0.25, 0.5, 1, 2, 4, 6, and 8 Hz. In total, we tested 34 participants. Results showed a small orientation anisotropy with lower thresholds for horizontal corrugations. Disparity thresholds as a function of temporal frequency were almost constant from 0.25 up to 1 Hz, and then they increased monotonically. Principal component analysis uncovered two significant factors for vertical and two for horizontal corrugations. Varimax rotation showed that one factor loaded from 0.25 to 1-2 Hz and a second factor from 2 to 4 to 8 Hz. Direct Oblimin rotation indicated a moderate intercorrelation of both factors. Our results suggest the possible existence of two somewhat interdependent temporal mechanisms involved in frontoparallel stereomotion.

Mean orientation discrimination based on proximal stimuli.

Ensemble perception refers to the ability to accurately and rapidly perceive summary statistical representations of specific features from a group of similar objects. However, the specific type of representation involved in this perception within a three-dimensional (3-D) environment remains unclear. In the context of perspective viewing with stereopsis, distal stimuli can be projected onto the retina as different forms of proximal stimuli based on their distances, despite sharing similar properties, such as object size and spatial frequency. This study aimed to investigate the effects of distal and proximal stimuli on the perception of summary statistical information related to orientation. In our experiment, we presented multiple Gabor patches in a stereoscopic environment, allowing us to measure the discrimination threshold of the mean orientation. The object size and spatial frequency were fixed for all patches regardless of depth. However, the physical angular size and absolute spatial frequency covaried with the depth. The results revealed the threshold elevation with depth expansion, especially when the patches formed two clusters at near and far distances, leading to large variations in their retinotopic representations. This finding indicates a minor contribution of similarity of the distal stimuli. Subsequent experiments demonstrated that the variability in physical angular size of the patches significantly influenced the threshold elevation in contrast to that of binocular disparity and absolute spatial frequency. These findings highlight the critical role of physical angular size variability in perceiving mean orientations within the 3-D space.

Double fusion, a depth perception mechanism in Panum's limiting case.

The origin of depth in Panum's limiting case is unclear at present, so we investigated the depth perception mechanism using a triangle type of Panum's stimulus with a slant effect and clear criterion. Experiment 1 explored whether participants can correctly perceive fixation and nonfixation features using the fixation point and quick representation of stimuli, then examined whether participants' depth judgments supported double fusion or single fusion. The results of Experiment 1 showed that participants could correctly perceive the depth of fixation and nonfixation features. That is, it supported double fusion. In Experiment 2, we examined whether the depth perceived by observers comes from depth contrast. The results of Experiment 2 showed that the depth of the two features perceived after binocular fusion did not originate from the depth contrast. The findings suggest that the depth perception mechanism of Panum's limiting case is more likely to be double fusion.

Parallax attention stereo matching network based on the improved group-wise correlation stereo network.

Recent stereo matching methods, especially end-to-end deep stereo matching networks, have achieved remarkable performance in the fields of autonomous driving and depth sensing. However, state-of-the-art stereo algorithms, even with the deep neural network framework, still have difficulties at finding correct correspondences in near-range regions and object edge cues. To reinforce the precision of disparity prediction, in the present study, we propose a parallax attention stereo matching algorithm based on the improved group-wise correlation stereo network to learn the disparity content from a stereo correspondence, and it supports end-to-end predictions of both disparity map and edge map. Particular, we advocate for a parallax attention module in three-dimensional (disparity, height and width) level, which structure ensures high-precision estimation by improving feature expression in near-range regions. This is critical for computer vision tasks and can be utilized in several existing models to enhance their performance. Moreover, in order to making full use of the edge information learned by two-dimensional feature extraction network, we propose a novel edge detection branch and multi-featured integration cost volume. It is demonstrated that based on our model, edge detection project is conducive to improve the accuracy of disparity estimation. Our method achieves better results than previous works on both Scene Flow and KITTI datasets.

A Joint Lateral Motion-Stereo Constraint.

Purpose: We developed a stereo task that is based on a motion direction discrimination to examine the role that depth can play in disambiguating motion direction. Methods: In this study, we quantified normal adults' static and dynamic (i.e., laterally moving) stereoscopic performance using a psychophysical task, where we dichoptically presented randomly arranged, limited lifetime Gabor elements at two depth planes (one plane was at the fixation plane and the other at an uncrossed disparity relative to the fixation plane). Each plane contained half of the elements. For the dynamic condition, all elements were vertically oriented and moved to the left in one plane and to the right in another plane; for the static condition, the elements were horizontally oriented in one plane and vertically oriented in another plane. Results: For the range of motion speed that we measured (from 0.17°/s to 5.33°/s), we observed clear speed tuning of the stereo sensitivity (P = 3.0 × 10-5). The shape of this tuning did not significantly change with different spatial frequencies. We also found a significant difference in stereo sensitivity between stereopsis with static and laterally moving stimuli (speed = 0.67°/s; P = 0.004). Such difference was not evident when we matched the task between the static and moving stimuli. Conclusions: We report that lateral motion modulates human global depth perception. This motion/stereo constraint is related to motion velocity not stimulus temporal frequency. We speculate that the processing of motion-based stereopsis of the kind reported here occurs in dorsal extrastriate cortex.

Detection of binocular chromatic fusion limit for opposite colors.

When the input colors of the left and right eyes are different from one another, binocular rivalry may occur. According to Hering theory, opponent colors would have the most significant tendency for rivalry. However, binocular color fusion still occurs under the condition that each eye's opponent chromatic responses do not exceed a specific chromatic fusion limit (CFL). This paper detects the binocular chromatic fusion limit for opposite colors within a conventional 3D display color gamut. We conducted a psychophysical experiment to quantitatively measure the binocular chromatic fusion limit on four opposite color directions in the CIELAB color space. Due to color inconsistency between eyes may affect the binocular color fusion, the experiment was divided into two sessions by swapping stimulation colors of left and right eyes. There were 5 subjects and they each experienced 320 trials. By analyzing the results, we used ellipses to quantify the chromatic fusion limits for opposing colors. The average semi-major axis of the ellipses is 27.55 Δ E a b∗, and the average semi-minor axis is 16.98 Δ E a b∗. We observed that the chromatic fusion limit varies with the opposite color direction: the CFL on RedBlue-GreenYellow direction is greater than that on Red-Green direction, the latter being greater than that on Yellow-Blue direction and the CFL on RedYellow-GreenBlue direction is smallest. Furthermore, we suggested that the chromatic fusion limit is independent of the distribution of cells, and there is no significant change in the fusion ellipse boundaries after swapping left and right eye colors.

Binocular treatment for amblyopia: A meta-analysis of randomized clinical trials.

BACKGROUND: To date, there is still no consensus regarding the effect of binocular treatment for amblyopia. The purpose of this systematic review and meta-analysis was to summarize the available evidence to determine whether binocular treatment is more effective than patching in children with amblyopia. METHODS: Four electronic databases (PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, and Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials) were searched for studies that compared binocular treatment and patching in children with amblyopia. The outcome measures were visual acuity and stereopsis. Pooled effects sizes were calculated with a random-effect model. The standardized difference in means (SDM) with 95% confidence intervals (CI) was calculated. Sensitivity analysis and assessment of publication bias were performed. RESULTS: Five randomized clinical trials were included. No significant difference in visual acuity between patients treated with binocular treatment and patching was observed (SDM = -0.12; 95% CI: -0.45-0.20; P = 0.464). No significant difference in stereopsis between patients treated with binocular treatment and patching was observed (SDM = -0.07; 95% CI: -0.61-0.48; P = 0.809). For both variables, the between-study heterogeneity was high (respectively, I2 = 61% and I2 = 57%). CONCLUSIONS: This meta-analysis found no convincing evidence supporting the efficacy of binocular treatment as an alternative to conventional patching. Therefore, the binocular treatment cannot fully replace traditional treatment but, to date, it can be considered a valid complementary therapy in peculiar cases. Further studies are required to determine whether more engaging therapies and new treatment protocols are more effective.

Binocular fusion enhances the efficiency of spot-the-difference gameplay.

Spot-the-difference, the popular childhood game and a prototypical change blindness task, involves identification of differences in local features of two otherwise identical scenes using an eye scanning and matching strategy. Through binocular fusion of the companion scenes, the game becomes a visual search task, wherein players can simply scan the cyclopean percept for local features that may distinctly stand-out due to binocular rivalry/lustre. Here, we had a total of 100 visually normal adult (18-28 years of age) volunteers play this game in the traditional non-fusion mode and after cross-fusion of the companion images using a hand-held mirror stereoscope. The results demonstrate that the fusion mode significantly speeds up gameplay and reduces errors, relative to the non-fusion mode, for a range of target sizes, contrasts, and chromaticity tested (all, p<0.001). Amongst the three types of local feature differences available in these images (polarity difference, presence/absence of a local feature difference and shape difference in a local feature difference), features containing polarity difference was identified as first in ~60-70% of instances in both modes of gameplay (p<0.01), with this proportion being larger in the fusion than in the non-fusion mode. The binocular fusion advantage is lost when the lustre cue is purposefully weakened through alterations in target luminance polarity. The spot-the-difference game may thus be cheated using binocular fusion and the differences readily identified through a vivid experience of binocular rivalry/lustre.

Disparity in Context: Understanding how monocular image content interacts with disparity processing in human visual cortex.

Horizontal disparities between the two eyes' retinal images are the primary cue for depth. Commonly used random ot tereograms (RDS) intentionally camouflage the disparity cue, breaking the correlations between monocular image structure and the depth map that are present in natural images. Because of the nonlinear nature of visual processing, it is unlikely that simple computational rules derived from RDS will be sufficient to explain binocular vision in natural environments. In order to understand the interplay between natural scene structure and disparity encoding, we used a depth-image-based-rendering technique and a library of natural 3D stereo pairs to synthesize two novel stereogram types in which monocular scene content was manipulated independent of scene depth information. The half-images of the novel stereograms comprised either random-dots or scrambled natural scenes, each with the same depth maps as the corresponding natural scene stereograms. Using these stereograms in a simultaneous Event-Related Potential and behavioral discrimination task, we identified multiple disparity-contingent encoding stages between 100 ~ 500 msec. The first disparity sensitive evoked potential was observed at ~100 msec after an earlier evoked potential (between ~50-100 msec) that was sensitive to the structure of the monocular half-images but blind to disparity. Starting at ~150 msec, disparity responses were stereogram-specific and predictive of perceptual depth. Complex features associated with natural scene content are thus at least partially coded prior to disparity information, but these features and possibly others associated with natural scene content interact with disparity information only after an intermediate, 2D scene-independent disparity processing stage.

Visual cortex cTBS increases mixed percept duration while a-tDCS has no effect on binocular rivalry.

Neuromodulation of the primary visual cortex using anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (a-tDCS) can alter visual perception and enhance neuroplasticity. However, the mechanisms that underpin these effects are currently unknown. When applied to the motor cortex, a-tDCS reduces the concentration of the inhibitory neurotransmitter gamma aminobutyric acid (GABA), an effect that has been linked to increased neuroplasticity. The aim of this study was to assess whether a-tDCS also reduces GABA-mediated inhibition when applied to the human visual cortex. Changes in visual cortex inhibition were measured using the mixed percept duration in binocular rivalry. Binocular rivalry mixed percept duration has recently been advocated as a direct and sensitive measure of visual cortex inhibition whereby GABA agonists decrease mixed percept durations and agonists of the excitatory neurotransmitter acetylcholine (ACH) increase them. Our hypothesis was that visual cortex a-tDCS would increase mixed percept duration by reducing GABA-mediated inhibition and increasing cortical excitation. In addition, we measured the effect of continuous theta-burst transcranial magnetic stimulation (cTBS) of the visual cortex on binocular rivalry dynamics. When applied to the motor or visual cortex, cTBS increases GABA concentration and we therefore hypothesized that visual cortex cTBS would decrease the mixed percept duration. Binocular rivalry dynamics were recorded before and after active and sham a-tDCS (N = 15) or cTBS (N = 15). Contrary to our hypotheses, a-tDCS had no effect, whereas cTBS increased mixed percepts during rivalry. These results suggest that the neurochemical mechanisms of a-tDCS may differ between the motor and visual cortices.

Specialized contributions of mid-tier stages of dorsal and ventral pathways to stereoscopic processing in macaque.

The division of labor between the dorsal and ventral visual pathways has been well studied, but not often with direct comparison at the single-neuron resolution with matched stimuli. Here we directly compared how single neurons in MT and V4, mid-tier areas of the two pathways, process binocular disparity, a powerful cue for 3D perception and actions. We found that MT neurons transmitted disparity signals more quickly and robustly, whereas V4 or its upstream neurons transformed the signals into sophisticated representations more prominently. Therefore, signaling speed and robustness were traded for transformation between the dorsal and ventral pathways. The key factor in this tradeoff was disparity-tuning shape: V4 neurons had more even-symmetric tuning than MT neurons. Moreover, the tuning symmetry predicted the degree of signal transformation across neurons similarly within each area, implying a general role of tuning symmetry in the stereoscopic processing by the two pathways.

Exploitation of image statistics with sparse coding in the case of stereo vision.

The sparse coding algorithm has served as a model for early processing in mammalian vision. It has been assumed that the brain uses sparse coding to exploit statistical properties of the sensory stream. We hypothesize that sparse coding discovers patterns from the data set, which can be used to estimate a set of stimulus parameters by simple readout. In this study, we chose a model of stereo vision to test our hypothesis. We used the Locally Competitive Algorithm (LCA), followed by a naïve Bayes classifier, to infer stereo disparity. From the results we report three observations. First, disparity inference was successful with this naturalistic processing pipeline. Second, an expanded, highly redundant representation is required to robustly identify the input patterns. Third, the inference error can be predicted from the number of active coefficients in the LCA representation. We conclude that sparse coding can generate a suitable general representation for subsequent inference tasks.

The relationship between reflex eye realignment and the percept of single vision in young children.

Effective binocular vision is dependent on both motor and perceptual function. Young children undergo development of both components while interacting with their dynamic three-dimensional environment. When this development fails, eye misalignment and double vision may result. We compared the range of image disparities over which young children display reflex motor realignment of their eyes with the range over which they report a single versus double percept. In response to step changes in the disparity of a 2.2° wide stimulus, 5-year-olds generated an adult-like reflex vergence velocity tuning function peaking at 2° of disparity, with a mean latency of 210 ms. On average, they reported double vision for stimulus disparities of 3° and larger, compared to 1° in adult reports. Three-year-olds also generated reflex vergence tuning functions peaking at approximately 2° of disparity, but their percepts could not be assessed. These data suggest that, by age 5, reflex eye realignment responses and percepts driven by these brief stimuli are tightly coordinated in space and time to permit robust binocular function around the point of fixation. Importantly, the plastic neural processes maintaining this tight coordination during growth control the stability of visual information driving learning during childhood.