This book provides a state-of-the-art review of high-level vision and the brain. Topics covered include object representation and recognition, category-specific visual knowledge, perceptual processes in reading, top-down processes in vision -- including attention and mental imagery -- and the relations between vision and conscious awareness. Each chapter includes a tutorial overview emphasizing the current state of knowledge and outstanding theoretical issues in the authors' area of research, along with a more in-depth report of an illustrative research project in the same area. The editors and contributors to this volume are among the most respected figures in the field of neuropsychology and perception, making the work presented here a standard-setting text and reference in that area.

This book provides a state-of-the-art review of high-level vision and the brain. Topics covered include object representation and recognition, category-specific visual knowledge, perceptual processes in reading, top-down processes in vision -- including attention and mental imagery -- and the relations between vision and conscious awareness. Each chapter includes a tutorial overview emphasizing the current state of knowledge and outstanding theoretical issues in the authors' area of research, along with a more in-depth report of an illustrative research project in the same area. The editors and contributors to this volume are among the most respected figures in the field of neuropsychology and perception, making the work presented here a standard-setting text and reference in that area.

The Neuropsychology of Vision describes a range of new approaches to neuropsychological investigation and provides a broad overview of visual neuropsychology. The book starts by presenting the results from new research employing single-unit recordings, on the neuronal basis of perception demonstrating that the visual system relies strongly on feedback from higher to lower levels of information processing, and that neuronal plasticity exists in the primary sensory cortices of adults, areas previously considered to be hard-wired. The book also describes other new and adapted techniques to measure brain activity, including multi-unit sum potential recording, functional magnetic resonance imaging and employing transcranial magnetic stimulation to induce temporary, circumscribed functional lesions in the cortices of normal subjects to mimic disorders. The coverage then moves on to review the experience of patients suffering from disturbances of visual perception. The disorders covered include agnosia, neglect, blindsight and achromatopsia. The final chapter is devoted to recovery and rehabilitation from cerebral visual disorder. Professors Fahle and Greenlee have brought together some of the leading international specialists in the field to provide this comprehensive and up-to-date review.

Visual information processing in humans has recently been studied from three distinct perspectives. This paper develops a way of melding the approaches of Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Psychology, and Neuropsychology, and explores the advantages of such a hybrid approach. Each of the individual approaches has its strengths and weaknesses, but these are different for the different approaches. It is argued in this paper that by combining the three, we are in a position to take advantage of each one's strengths and may be able to circumvent each one's weaknesses. Additional keyword topics include: mental imagery and computer models.

One important means to understanding normal cognitive functions is the study of the breakdown of these functions following brain damage. This book provides reviews of major case studies dealing with the breakdown of visual perception and recognition, including the disorders of motion vision, colour vision, perceptual integration, perceptual classification, recognition of particular categories of object, semantic access from vision (in optic aphasia), and recognition impairments with relative sparing of imagery. The cases are discussed in the light of studies that have followed since, and the chapters provide a context in which the contributions of the case studies can be evaluated.

"Ullman's book is full of deep insight, careful analysis, and awesome creativity, as you would expect from a top-notch, internationally recognized leader. His creative solutions to those problems are important not only to people who study computer vision, but also to anyone who believes, as I do, that we have to understand how the brain sees if we are to understand how the brain works." - Patrick H. Winston, Director, Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, M.I.T. "This book marks a new era in the study of the more "cognitive" aspects of vision. An interdisciplinary approach is used in a creative, careful, and rigorous way to produce deep insights into the nature of fundamental problems and their viable solutions. This book must be read by anyone interested in visual perception, natural or artificial." - Stephen M. Kosslyn, Professor of Psychology, Harvard University "Shimon Ullman's creative ideas about the visual recognition of objects have been very influential, and he presents his views clearly and forcefully in this book. "High-Level Vision" is valuable also because it is full of Dr. Ullman's many original ideas about other aspects of visual perception and cognition, such as classification, visual routines, saliency, and neural mechanisms of the visual cortex. This is an important book from a leader in computer vision and human perception." - Robert Shapley, Center for Neural Science, NYU In this book, Shimon Ullman focuses on the processes of high-level vision that deal with the interpretation and use of what is seen in the image. In particular, he examines two major problems. The first, object recognition andclassification, involves recognizing objects despite large variations in appearance caused by changes in viewing position, illumination, occlusion, and object shape. The second, visual cognition, involves the extraction of shape properties and spatial relations in the course of performing visual tasks such as object manipulation, planning movements in the environment, or interpreting graphical material such as diagrams, graphs and maps. The book first takes up object recognition and develops a novel approach to the recognition of three-dimensional objects. It then studies a number of related issues in high-level vision, including object classification, scene segmentation, and visual cognition. Using computational considerations discussed throughout the book, along with psychophysical and biological data, the final chapter proposes a model for the general flow of information in the visual cortex. Understanding vision is a key problem in the brain sciences, human cognition, and artificial intelligence. Because of the interdisciplinary nature of the theories developed in this work, "High-Level Vision" will be of interest to readers in all three of these fields.

Vision allows us to do many things. It enables us to perceive a world composed of meaningful objects and events. It enables us to track those events as they take place in front of our eyes. It enables us to read. It provides accurate spatial information for actions such as reaching for or avoiding objects. It provides colour and texture that can help us to separate objects from their background, and so forth. This book is concerned with understanding the processes that allow us to carry out these various visually'driven behaviours. In the past ten years our understanding of visual processing has undergone a rapid change, primarily fostered by the convergence of computational, experimental and neuropsychological work on the topic. Visual Cognition provides the first major attempt to cover all aspects of this work within a single text. It provides a state'of'the'art summary of research on visual information processing, relevant to advanced undergraduates, postgraduates and research workers. It covers: seeing static forms, object recognition, dynamic vision (motion perception and visual masking), visual attention, visual memory, visual aspects of reading. For each topic, the relevant computational, experimental and neuropsychological work is integrated to provide a broader coverage than that of other texts.