Humans Rely More on ‘Inferred’ Visual Objects Than ‘Real’ Ones

Summary: According to researchers, people believe inferred visual objects generated in the brain to be more reliable than external images from the real world.

Source: eLife.

Humans treat ‘inferred’ visual objects generated by the brain as more reliable than external images from the real world, according to new research published in eLife.

The study, from the University of Osnabrück, Germany, reveals that when choosing between two identical visual objects – one generated internally based on information from the blind spot and an external one – we are surprisingly likely to show a bias towards the internal information.

To make sense of the world, humans and animals need to combine information from multiple sources. This is usually done according to how reliable each piece of information is. For example, to know when to cross the street, we usually rely more on what we see than what we hear – but this can change on a foggy day.

“In such situations with the blind spot, the brain ‘fills in’ the missing information from its surroundings, resulting in no apparent difference in what we see,” says senior author Professor Peter König, from the University of Osnabrück’s Institute of Cognitive Science. “While this fill-in is normally accurate enough, it is mostly unreliable because no actual information from the real world ever reaches the brain. We wanted to find out if we typically handle this filled-in information differently to real, direct sensory information, or whether we treat it as equal.”

To do this, König and his team asked study participants to choose between two striped visual images, both of which were displayed to them using shutter glasses. Each image was displayed either partially inside or completely outside the visual blind spot. Both were perceived as identical and ‘continuous’ due to the filling-in effect, and participants were asked to select the image they thought represented the real, continuous stimulus.

“We thought people would either make their choice without preference, or with a preference towards the real stimulus, but exactly the opposite happened – there was in fact a strong bias towards the filled-in stimulus inside the blind spot,” says first author Benedikt Ehinger, researcher at the University of Osnabrück. “Additionally, in an explorative analysis of how long the participants took to make their choice, we saw that they were slightly quicker to choose this stimulus than the one outside the blind spot.”

So, why are subjects so keen on the blind-spot information when it is essentially the least reliable? The team’s interpretation is that subjects compare the internal representation (or ‘template’) of a continuous stimulus against the incoming sensory input, resulting in an error signal which represents the mismatch. In the absence of real information, no deviation and therefore no error or a smaller signal occurs, ultimately leading to a higher credibility at the decision-making stage. This indicates that perceptual decision-making can rely more on inferred rather than real information, even when there is some knowledge about the reduced reliability of the inferred image available in the brain.

“In other words, the implicit knowledge that a filled-in stimulus is less reliable than an external one does not seem to be taken into account for perceptual decision-making,” Ehinger explains.

Image shows a woman looking at black and white stripped circles on a computer screen.
A study participant looks at two striped visual images in a study about whether humans typically handle ‘filled-in’ information from the blind spot differently to real, direct sensory information, or whether we treat it as equal. Participants were asked to choose between two striped visual images, one ‘real’ and one inset in the blind spot, displayed using shutter glasses. The study showed that, surprisingly, participants mostly chose the stimulus inside the blind-spot as the ‘real’ continuous image. NeuroscienceNews.com image is credited to Ricardo Gameiro.

The team says that understanding how we integrate information from different sources with different reliabilities can inform us about the exact mechanisms used by the brain to make decisions based on our perceptions.

“By finding out how implied stimuli are compared to real ones, we can better understand how other internal sources of information are weighted against external, real information,” König concludes. “In future, we would be interested to see if the greater reliability placed on implied information is specific to the blind spot, or whether it generalises to other internal information that often occurs in visual processing, such as with optical illusions, afterimages or change blindness.”

About this neuroscience research article

Funding: This work was funded by Horizon 2020, DeutscheForschungsgemeinschaft.

Source: Emily Packer – eLife
Image Source: NeuroscienceNews.com image is credited to Ricardo Gameiro.
Original Research: Full open access research for “Humans treat unreliable filled-in percepts as more real than veridical ones” by Benedikt V Ehinger, Katja Häusser, José P Ossandón, and Peter König in eLife. Published online May 16 2017 doi:10.7554/eLife.21761

Cite This NeuroscienceNews.com Article

[cbtabs][cbtab title=”MLA”]eLife “Humans Rely More on ‘Inferred’ Visual Objects Than ‘Real’ Ones.” NeuroscienceNews. NeuroscienceNews, 16 May 2017.
<https://neurosciencenews.com/inferred-real-visual-objects-6690/>.[/cbtab][cbtab title=”APA”]eLife (2017, May 16). Humans Rely More on ‘Inferred’ Visual Objects Than ‘Real’ Ones. NeuroscienceNew. Retrieved May 16, 2017 from https://neurosciencenews.com/inferred-real-visual-objects-6690/[/cbtab][cbtab title=”Chicago”]eLife “Humans Rely More on ‘Inferred’ Visual Objects Than ‘Real’ Ones.” https://neurosciencenews.com/inferred-real-visual-objects-6690/ (accessed May 16, 2017).[/cbtab][/cbtabs]


Abstract

Humans treat unreliable filled-in percepts as more real than veridical ones

Humans often evaluate sensory signals according to their reliability for optimal decision-making. However, how do we evaluate percepts generated in the absence of direct input that are, therefore, completely unreliable? Here, we utilize the phenomenon of filling-in occurring at the physiological blind-spots to compare partially inferred and veridical percepts. Subjects chose between stimuli that elicit filling-in, and perceptually equivalent ones presented outside the blind-spots, looking for a Gabor stimulus without a small orthogonal inset. In ambiguous conditions, when the stimuli were physically identical and the inset was absent in both, subjects behaved opposite to optimal, preferring the blind-spot stimulus as the better example of a collinear stimulus, even though no relevant veridical information was available. Thus, a percept that is partially inferred is paradoxically considered more reliable than a percept based on external input. In other words: Humans treat filled-in inferred percepts as more real than veridical ones.

“Humans treat unreliable filled-in percepts as more real than veridical ones” by Benedikt V Ehinger, Katja Häusser, José P Ossandón, and Peter König in eLife. Published online May 16 2017 doi:10.7554/eLife.21761

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