What are lightness illusions and why do we see them?

ABSTRACT: Lightness illusions are fundamental to human perception, and yet why we see them is still the focus of much research. Here we address the question by modelling not human physiology or perception directly as is typically the case but our natural visual world and the need for robust behaviour. Artificial neural networks were trained to predict the reflectance of surfaces in a synthetic ecology consisting of 3-D "dead-leaves" scenes under non-uniform illumination. The networks learned to solve this task accurately and robustly given only ambiguous sense data. In addition--and as a direct consequence of their experience--the networks also made systematic "errors" in their behaviour commensurate with human illusions, which includes brightness contrast and assimilation--although assimilation (sp

SUBMITTER: Corney D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1994982 | biostudies-literature | 2007 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature