Midterm 2: Spatial vision

whats cortical maginification?

how much an area of the visual cortex is devoted to (the fovea gets a lot of processing in the PVC).

What is Retinotopic mapping?

Neighboring parts of the visual scene are processed by neighboring brain areas (like a map).

what are simple cell receptive fields?

Patterns in the PVC that respond best ro edges or bars. they ARENT center surround and DO have orientation tuning to detect edges and stripes and have ON and OFF areas. 

what is the blindsight condition and its symptoms? 

When a person who is blind due to PVC damage can still respond to visual info. Example: knowing the direction of a moving object, location of a flash, knowing if something is a circle or square. 

What is Fourier Analysis? 

Lets us break down any image into a set of gratings. Breaks images down to basic blocks of spatial frequencies. 

how do you recognize grating patterns at high frequencies and contrats’s?

A gratting is a pattern of alternating light and dark stripes (like black and white bars). Used in vision test to see how well we can see detail (spatial frequencies).

What do high/low spatial frequencies look like? 

Low: Blurry, broad shapes. High: Edges, textures, fine lines, rapid changes in brightness. 

What are the basics of CSF?

Describes how sensitive your visual system is. measured by seeing how well the organism can see grattings (at different frequencies and contrasts), keep track of how well they are seen, and the results on the graph produce the CSF.

How would you use CSF to judge whod be best at foggy driving, or at the snallen eye chart etc?

CSF tells us how well any visual system can see any image. If you need a visual system that is good at seeing tiny details, youll want someone with a curve that covers the high frequencies on the right part of the graph. Low frequencies is the left part of the graph.

How could you test the CSF on an infant or a goldfish? 

For a goldfish you could always feed them next to a grating pattern that you stick to their tank.