[extropy-chat] MIT Reports New Insights In Visual Recognition for Improved Machine Vision Systems

[Giu1i0 Pri5c0]

>From Science Daily: MIT scientists are reporting new insights into how the
human brain recognizes objects, especially faces, in work that could lead to
improved machine vision systems, diagnostics for certain neurological
conditions and more. What is novel about this work is that it provides
direct evidence of contextual cues eliciting object-specific neural
responses in the brain.
The team used functional magnetic resonance imaging to map neuronal
responses of the brain's fusiform face area (FFA) to a variety of images.
These included clear faces, blurred faces attached to bodies, blurred faces
alone, bodies alone, and a blurred face placed in the wrong context (below
the torso, for example). Only the clear faces and blurred faces with proper
contextual cues elicited strong FFA responses. "These data support the idea
that facial representations underlying FFA activity are based not only on
intrinsic facial cues, but rather incorporate contextual information as
well.
Computer recognition systems work reasonably well when images are clear, but
they break down catastrophically when images are degraded. A human's ability
is so far beyond what the computer can do. The new work could aid the
development of better systems by changing our concept of the kind of image
information useful for determining what an object is.
>From the original MIT news release: The findings not only add to scientists'
understanding of the brain and vision, but also open up some very
interesting issues from the perspective of developmental neuroscience. For
example, how does the brain acquire the ability to use contextual cues? Are
we born with this ability, or is it learned over time? Pawan Sinha, an
assistant professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences (BCS),
is exploring these questions through Project Prakash, a scientific and
humanitarian effort to look at how individuals who are born blind but later
gain some vision perceive objects and faces.
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