Perception and Action in Natural and Virtual Environments

Dear Colleagues,

The literature on perceptual dimensions is vast, but the assumptions, methodologies, and interpretations of the results achieved have often been discordant. The recent focus on the field of cross-modality, however, has advanced research by pointing to the unity of the senses.

Most of these studies have been conducted from a psychophysical and neuroscientific viewpoint, while experimental phenomenological approaches have received less attention. Understanding how to extend analysis to open scenes has been both a challenge and a limit to these studies on account of the multiple variables that need to be monitored. For this reason, current studies on perception are mainly confined to laboratory tests.

The experimental results obtained in cross-modal perception have now been expanded to the field of computer vision technology using models aimed at understanding the human perceptual system. The introduction of functional magnetic resonance (fMRI), which combines machine vision and neuroscience by connecting brain activity information and visual data, has allowed us to overcome the limits of previous models based on mapping visual and linguistic data. Nevertheless, several issues continue to challenge the development of these models, like the large datasets required, the computational costs, and the intricate complexity of the model. Another limit of current models is their reliance on natural scene images, which are frozen snapshots of what living organisms perceive in natural environments. And then there is the conception of the model itself, which rarely takes into consideration the structure of the subjective nature of perceptual experience, as it is unmanageable with the current design. All these factors raise the question of whether producing increasingly vast and varied datasets, even if they involve cross-modal data, is the key to solving the actual issues involved.

In addition to ongoing contemporary research into natural perception, Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality offer an interesting context for discussion, given that they are both advanced methods of perceiving which rely on shared virtual environments.

In these media, the comparison between physically and subjectively perceived reality is particularly striking, as they both seek to conceive technologies that trigger realistic experiences and expand both modal and cross-modal dimensions of perceiving.

New media and immersive technologies, which plunge the perceiver into a full immersion experience of an environment, are useful tools for analyzing the fine structure of perceptual appearances. They also possess a set of possible neuroscience applications as therapeutic platforms in cases of impairment, and as new ways of conducting psychological tests. To meet this challenge, however, the new tools must recognize and consider the structure of awareness and subjective experience on which they are based.

These technologies raise new questions and offer important insights into the interaction between subjective perception, brain activity, action, digital systems, and nature. In this respect, however, the information offered by the experimental perceptologist is basic.

Not surprisingly, Western and Oriental artworks can be a strong ally here, as they help both perception sciences and the fields of AI and VR, by clarifying the many dimensions of perceiving enhanced with imagination. The artistic conceptualizations and the many innovative techniques invented by artists over the centuries are powerful tools for understanding our subjective experience of the environment, the pervading allusive ambiguity of perception, and how embodied our cognition is. There are, for example, many astonishing techniques that range from Ancient Greek encaustic painting to Renaissance frescoes and on to the 19th century explosion of watercolor in Western painting. Then there is the variety of thickness, pressure and direction involved in calligraphic brushstrokes, or the soft ink-washes that Hiroshige uses to create mist effects in Oriental art. Recent studies show how these elements affect functional connectivity in the brain and in so doing, art becomes a strong source of improvement for neuroscientific research and applications. Art as a laboratory does not proceed by accumulating increasingly vast quantities of data but by extracting and shaping essential dimensions of perceiving. These “skeletons” become qualitative, meaningful, and expressive properties of phenomena, without relying on linguistic data. From the behavior of dots, lines, surfaces, textures, and wholes to life forms and landscapes, Gestalt laws govern both perception and figurative and abstract works of art.

This S.I. aims to be both a platform and an interface for the study of perception through the contributions of scholars from different perceptual fields (perceptologists, brain scientists, and researchers working in virtual environments). It seeks to launch an interdisciplinary discussion and provide information to advance and motivate innovative developments in the field of brain activity and its applications.

This S.I. therefore calls for contributions on perceptual experience from natural perception itself to art, landscape, architectural design, and the emerging computational fields where new media such as video game design and animation are flourishing. The joint research of scholars working in different disciplinary fields will provide new insights into the field of brain science and their application to future projects. Desirable results can be expected in the fields of perceptual experience, perceptual cross-modality, perception in open scenes and in virtual environments, and correlatively research in cross-modal neural plasticity, neural work analysis, innovation in psychological tests and therapy, modeling, cognition, action, and behavior, as well as broadening research into BCI interface technologies.

All submissions will undergo rigorous peer review according to the journal’s standards.

Dr. Liliana Albertazzi
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Brain Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.