Search Results (10)

Background: By exploring the principles of Gestalt psychology, the neural mechanisms of perception, and computational models, scientists aim to unravel the complex processes that enable us to perceive a coherent and organized world. This multidisciplinary approach continues to advance our understanding of how the brain constructs a perceptual world from sensory inputs. Objectives and Methods: This study investigates the nature of visual perception through an experimental paradigm and method based on a comparative analysis of human and artificial intelligence (AI) responses to a series of modified square images. We introduce the concept of a “phenomenal gradient” in human visual perception, where different attributes of an object are organized syntactically and hierarchically in terms of their perceptual salience. Results: Our findings reveal that human visual processing involves complex mechanisms including shape prioritization, causal inference, amodal completion, and the perception of visible invisibles. In contrast, AI responses, while geometrically precise, lack these sophisticated interpretative capabilities. These differences highlight the richness of human visual cognition and the current limitations of model-generated descriptions in capturing causal, completion-based, and context-dependent inferences. The present work introduces the notion of a ‘phenomenal gradient’ as a descriptive framework and provides an initial comparative analysis that motivates testable hypotheses for future behavioral and computational studies, rather than direct claims about improving AI systems. Conclusions: By bridging phenomenology, information theory, and cognitive science, this research challenges existing paradigms and suggests a more integrated approach to studying visual consciousness. Full article

We address the challenge that occlusions in on-branch soybean images impede accurate pod-level phenotyping. We propose a lab on-branch pipeline that couples a prior-guided synthetic data generator (producing synchronized visible and amodal labels) with an amodal instance segmentation framework based on an improved Swin Transformer backbone with a Simple Attention Module (SimAM) and dual heads, trained via three-stage transfer (synthetic excised → synthetic on-branch → few-shot real). Guided by complete (amodal) masks, a morphology-driven module performs pose normalization, axial geometric modeling, multi-scale fused density mapping, marker-controlled watershed, and topological consistency refinement to extract seed per pod (SPP) and geometric traits. On real on-branch data, the model attains Visible Average Precision (AP) 50/75 of 91.6/77.6 and amodal AP50/75 of 90.1/74.7, and incorporating synthetic data yields consistent gains across models, indicating effective occlusion reasoning. On excised pod tests, SPP achieves a mean absolute error (MAE) of 0.07 and a root mean square error (RMSE) of 0.26; pod length/width achieves an MAE of 2.87/3.18 px with high agreement (R² up to 0.94). Overall, the co-designed data–model–task pipeline recovers complete pod geometry under heavy occlusion and enables non-destructive, high-precision, and low-annotation-cost extraction of key traits, providing a practical basis for standardized laboratory phenotyping and downstream breeding applications. Full article

The current study aimed to evaluate the effect different modalities (pictures and words) of food stimuli have on inhibitory control under different homeostatic states. To this end, the homeostatic state was altered by asking participants to fast for 16 h (n = 67) or eat lunch as usual (n = 76) before completing an online stop-signal task with modal (pictures) and amodal (words) food and valenced-matched non-food stimuli. The inclusion of non-food stimuli allowed us to test the food specificity of the effect. We found a significant Group × Modality × Stimulus Type interaction (F(1,141) = 5.29, p = 0.023, η_p² = 0.036): fasted individuals had similar inhibitory capacity for modal and amodal food stimuli but better inhibitory capacity for non-food words compared to images, while there were no inhibitory differences in dependence on either modality or stimulus type in satiated individuals. Thus, we were able to show that inhibitory capacities to modal compared to amodal stimuli depend on participants’ current state of fasting. Future studies should focus on how this lowered inhibitory capacity influences food intake, as well as the role of stimulus valence in cognitive processing, to clarify potential implications for dieting and weight loss training. Full article

Spiders possess a unique visual system, split into eight different eyes and divided into two fully independent visual pathways. This peculiar organization begs the question of how visual information is processed, and whether the classically recognized Gestalt rules of perception hold true. In a previous experiment, we tested the ability of jumping spiders to associate a geometrical shape with a reward (sucrose solution), and then to generalize the learned association to a partially occluded version of the shape. The occluded shape was presented together with a broken version of the same shape. The former should be perceived as a whole shape only in the case the animals, like humans, are able to amodally complete an object partly hidden by an occluder; otherwise, the two shapes would be perceived as identical. There, the spiders learned the association but failed to generalize. Here, we present a replication of the experiment, with an increased number of subjects, a DeepLabCut-based scoring procedure, and an improved statistical analysis. The results of the experiment follow closely the direction of the effects observed in the previous work but fail to rise to significance. We discuss the importance of study replication, and we especially highlight the use of automated scoring procedures to maximize objectivity in behavioral studies. Full article

Although current computer vision systems are closer to the human intelligence when it comes to comprehending the visible world than previously, their performance is hindered when objects are partially occluded. Since we live in a dynamic and complex environment, we encounter more occluded objects than fully visible ones. Therefore, instilling the capability of amodal perception into those vision systems is crucial. However, overcoming occlusion is difficult and comes with its own challenges. The generative adversarial network (GAN), on the other hand, is renowned for its generative power in producing data from a random noise distribution that approaches the samples that come from real data distributions. In this survey, we outline the existing works wherein GAN is utilized in addressing the challenges of overcoming occlusion, namely amodal segmentation, amodal content completion, order recovery, and acquiring training data. We provide a summary of the type of GAN, loss function, the dataset, and the results of each work. We present an overview of the implemented GAN architectures in various applications of amodal completion. We also discuss the common objective functions that are applied in training GAN for occlusion-handling tasks. Lastly, we discuss several open issues and potential future directions. Full article

The occlusion problem is one of the fundamental problems of computer vision, especially in the case of non-rigid objects with variable shapes and complex backgrounds, such as humans. With the rise of computer vision in recent years, the problem of occlusion has also become increasingly visible in branches such as human pose estimation, where the object of study is a human being. In this paper, we propose a two-stage framework that solves the human de-occlusion problem. The first stage is the amodal completion stage, where a new network structure is designed based on the hourglass network, and a large amount of prior information is obtained from the training set to constrain the model to predict in the correct direction. The second phase is the content recovery phase, where visible guided attention (VGA) is added to the U-Net with a symmetric U-shaped network structure to derive relationships between visible and invisible regions and to capture information between contexts across scales. As a whole, the first stage is the encoding stage, and the second stage is the decoding stage, and the network structure of each stage also consists of encoding and decoding, which is symmetrical overall and locally. To evaluate the proposed approach, we provided a dataset, the human occlusion dataset, which has occluded objects from drilling scenes and synthetic images that are close to reality. Experiments show that the method has high performance in terms of quality and diversity compared to existing methods. It is able to remove occlusions in complex scenes and can be extended to human pose estimation. Full article

BodyMetrix™ BX-2000 (IntelaMetrix, Livermore, CA, USA) has been introduced as one of the alternatives and portable methods to estimate body fat percentage. However, inconsistent results between protocols built-in the Bodymetrix^TM may be compelling the question of its validity. Thus, this study first investigated the possible errors between protocols and evaluated the validity of body fat percentage (BF%) compared to the gold standard method (dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry, DEXA). One hundred and five collegiate males, aged 20.01 ± 2.11 years, body height, 174.81 ± 6.01 cm, body mass, 73.26 ± 13.60 kg, and body mass index, 23.91 ± 3.77 kg·m⁻² participated in the present study. Participants’ body fat percentage was estimated by built-in nine different protocols in the BodyMetrix™ BX-2000 using A-MODE ultrasound. Pearson correlation (r), Mean absolute percentage errors (MAPEs), Bland & Altman plots, and Equivalence testing were used to examine the validity of each protocol by comparing it to the criterion measure (i.e., DEXA). The results indicated good potential for almost all of the protocols in correlation (Min: r = 0.79, Max: r = 0.92)., MAPEs (Min: 20.0%, Max: 33.8%), and Bland-Altman (Min diff: 16.7, Max diff: 41.4). Particularly, the estimated BF% from protocol 7 (4-sites by Durnin & Wormersley) and protocol 9 (9-sites Parllo) were completed within the equivalence zone (±10% of the mean). The estimates measured by protocol 7 and protocol 9 identified as the most valid methods for estimating BF% using a BodyMetrix™ BX-2000, compared to the DEXA. Our findings provide valuable information when applying in young male individuals, but future studies with other populations such as female or adolescents may be required to suggest a valid protocol within the instrument. Full article

In this work, we discussed and counter-commented van der Helm’s comments on our previous paper (Pinna and Conti, Brain Sci., 2019, 9, 149), where we demonstrated unique and relevant visual properties imparted by contrast polarity in eliciting amodal completion. The main question we addressed was: “What is the role of shape formation and perceptual organization in inducing amodal completion?” To answer this question, novel stimuli were studied through Gestalt experimental phenomenology. The results demonstrated the domination of the contrast polarity against good continuation, T-junctions, and regularity. Moreover, the limiting conditions explored revealed a new kind of junction next to the T- and Y-junctions, respectively responsible for amodal completion and tessellation. We called them I-junctions. The results were theoretically discussed in relation to the previous approaches and in the light of the phenomenal salience imparted by contrast polarity. In counter-commenting van der Helm’s comments we went into detail of his critiques and rejected all of them point-by-point. We proceeded by summarizing hypotheses and discussion of the previous work, then commenting on each critique through old and new phenomena and clarifying the meaning of our previous conclusions. Full article

Pinna and Conti (Brain Sci., 2019, 9, 149, doi:10.3390/brainsci9060149) presented phenomena concerning the salience and role of contrast polarity in human visual perception, particularly in amodal completion. These phenomena are indeed illustrative thereof, but here, the focus is on their claims (1) that neither simplicity nor likelihood approaches can account for these phenomena; and (2) that simplicity and likelihood are equivalent. I argue that their first claim is based on incorrect assumptions, whereas their second claim is simply untrue. Full article

In this work, we demonstrated unique and relevant visual properties imparted by contrast polarity in perceptual organization and in eliciting amodal completion, which is the vivid completion of a single continuous object of the visible parts of an occluded shape despite portions of its boundary contours not actually being seen. T-junction, good continuation, and closure are considered the main principles involved according to relevant explanations of amodal completion based on the simplicity–Prägnanz principle, Helmholtz’s likelihood, and Bayesian inference. The main interest of these approaches is to explain how the occluded object is completed, what is the amodal shape, and how contours of partially visible fragments are relatable behind an occluder. Different from these perspectives, amodal completion was considered here as a visual phenomenon and not as a process, i.e., the final outcome of perceptual processes and grouping principles. Therefore, the main question we addressed through our stimuli was “What is the role of shape formation and perceptual organization in inducing amodal completion?” To answer this question, novel stimuli, similar to limiting cases and instantiae crucis, were studied through Gestalt experimental phenomenology. The results demonstrated the domination of the contrast polarity against good continuation, T-junctions, and regularity. Moreover, the limiting conditions explored revealed a new kind of junction next to the T- and Y-junctions, respectively responsible for amodal completion and tessellation. We called them I-junctions. The results were theoretically discussed in relation to the previous approaches and in the light of the phenomenal salience imparted by contrast polarity. Full article