Opening Up Vision: The Case Against Encapsulation

Many have argued that early visual processing is encapsulated from the influence of higher-level goals, expectations, and knowledge of the world. (Early vision is thought to result in perception of three-dimensional shapes and surfaces, prior to object recognition and categorization.) Here we confront the main arguments offered in support of such a view, showing that they are unpersuasive. We also present evidence of top–down influences on early vision, emphasizing data from cognitive neuroscience. Our conclusion is that encapsulation is not a defining feature of visual processing. But we take this conclusion to be quite modest in scope, readily incorporated into mainstream vision science.

[1]  S. Kosslyn,et al.  The case for mental imagery , 2006 .

[2]  Z. Pylyshyn,et al.  Seeing and Visualizing , 2022 .

[3]  S. Kosslyn Image and brain: the resolution of the imagery debate , 1994 .

[4]  Can you experience ‘top-down’ effects on perception?: The case of race categories and perceived lightness , 2014, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review.

[5]  When bottom-up meets top-down , 2017, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[6]  C. Summerfield,et al.  Expectation (and attention) in visual cognition , 2009, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[7]  Nir Levy,et al.  Reading and doing arithmetic nonconsciously , 2012, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[8]  A. Flew,et al.  Patterns of Discovery. , 1961 .

[9]  A. Raftopoulos Cognition and Perception: How Do Psychology and Neural Science Inform Philosophy? , 2009 .

[10]  Christopher Summerfield,et al.  Dissociable prior influences of signal probability and relevance on visual contrast sensitivity , 2012, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[11]  Georg Goldenberg,et al.  Imagery without perception—A case study of anosognosia for cortical blindness , 1995, Neuropsychologia.

[12]  Sheng He,et al.  Semantic and subword priming during binocular suppression , 2009, Consciousness and Cognition.

[13]  Randolph Blake,et al.  Deconstructing continuous flash suppression. , 2012, Journal of vision.

[14]  E. Aarnoutse,et al.  Action Preparation Shapes Processing in Early Visual Cortex , 2015, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[15]  Farid Masrour,et al.  Revisiting the empirical case against perceptual modularity , 2015, Front. Psychol..

[16]  M. Bar,et al.  Magnocellular Projections as the Trigger of Top-Down Facilitation in Recognition , 2007, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[17]  Floris P. de Lange,et al.  Prior Expectations Evoke Stimulus Templates in the Primary Visual Cortex , 2014, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[18]  G. Lupyan,et al.  Words Jump-Start Vision: A Label Advantage in Object Recognition , 2015, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[19]  K. Rockland,et al.  Cortical connections of the occipital lobe in the rhesus monkey: Interconnections between areas 17, 18, 19 and the superior temporal sulcus , 1981, Brain Research.

[20]  T. Sejnowski,et al.  A critique of pure vision , 1993 .

[21]  D. J. Felleman,et al.  Distributed hierarchical processing in the primate cerebral cortex. , 1991, Cerebral cortex.

[22]  N. Kanwisher,et al.  Recognition alters the spatial pattern of FMRI activation in early retinotopic cortex. , 2010, Journal of neurophysiology.

[23]  Sheng He,et al.  Seeing the invisible: The scope and limits of unconscious processing in binocular rivalry , 2008, Progress in Neurobiology.

[24]  P. Neri Semantic Control of Feature Extraction from Natural Scenes , 2014, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[25]  Lars Muckli,et al.  Decoding Sound and Imagery Content in Early Visual Cortex , 2014, Current Biology.

[26]  N. Kanwisher,et al.  PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE Research Article Visual Recognition As Soon as You Know It Is There, You Know What It Is , 2022 .

[27]  Michael L. Anderson Neural reuse: A fundamental organizational principle of the brain , 2010, Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

[28]  Rick Dale,et al.  Conceptual Set as a Top — Down Constraint on Visual Object Identification , 2007, Perception.

[29]  Christopher Summerfield,et al.  Dissociable prior influences of signal probability and relevance on visual contrast sensitivity , 2011 .

[30]  Peter Carruthers,et al.  The Architecture of the Mind: Massive Modularity and the Flexibility of Thought , 2006 .

[31]  C. Gilbert,et al.  Top-down influences on visual processing , 2013, Nature Reviews Neuroscience.

[32]  Z. Pylyshyn Is vision continuous with cognition? The case for cognitive impenetrability of visual perception. , 1999, The Behavioral and brain sciences.

[33]  H. Bridge,et al.  Vivid visual mental imagery in the absence of the primary visual cortex , 2011, Journal of Neurology.

[34]  Michael L. Mack,et al.  Decoupling object detection and categorization. , 2010, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[35]  J. Lyons CIRCULARITY, RELIABILITY, AND THE COGNITIVE PENETRABILITY OF PERCEPTION , 2011 .

[36]  Floris P. de Lange,et al.  Expectations accelerate entry of visual stimuli into awareness. , 2015, Journal of vision.

[37]  I. Toni,et al.  Shared Representations for Working Memory and Mental Imagery in Early Visual Cortex , 2013, Current Biology.

[38]  Thomas Serre,et al.  Reading the mind's eye: Decoding category information during mental imagery , 2010, NeuroImage.

[39]  H. Barrett,et al.  Modularity in cognition: framing the debate. , 2006, Psychological review.

[40]  C. Gilbert,et al.  Perceptual learning and top-down influences in primary visual cortex , 2004, Nature Neuroscience.

[41]  Chaz Firestone,et al.  " Top-down " Effects Where None Should Be Found: the El Greco Fallacy in Perception Research , 2022 .

[42]  J. Hegdé,et al.  A Link between Visual Disambiguation and Visual Memory , 2010, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[43]  Geoffrey M. Ghose,et al.  Attention directed by expectations enhances receptive fields in cortical area MT , 2010, Vision Research.

[44]  C. Gilbert,et al.  Top-Down Modulation of Lateral Interactions in Visual Cortex , 2013, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[45]  Pawan Sinha,et al.  Immediate susceptibility to visual illusions after sight onset , 2015, Current Biology.

[46]  Serena Sordi,et al.  Patterns of Discovery , 2006 .

[47]  Karl J. Friston,et al.  Where bottom-up meets top-down: neuronal interactions during perception and imagery. , 2004, Cerebral cortex.

[48]  Eileen Kowler,et al.  Anticipatory smooth eye movements with random-dot kinematograms. , 2012, Journal of vision.

[49]  Stanislas Dehaene Consciousness and the Brain , 2014 .

[50]  Christof Koch,et al.  Single-neuron correlates of subjective vision in the human medial temporal lobe , 2002, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[51]  Patrick Cavanagh,et al.  Recovery of 3D volume from 2-tone images of novel objects , 1998, Cognition.

[52]  Wu Li,et al.  Adaptive shape processing in primary visual cortex , 2011, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[53]  Gary Lupyan,et al.  Language can boost otherwise unseen objects into visual awareness , 2013, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[54]  K. Rockland,et al.  Laminar origins and terminations of cortical connections of the occipital lobe in the rhesus monkey , 1979, Brain Research.

[55]  B. Scholl,et al.  Cognition does not affect perception: Evaluating the evidence for “top-down” effects , 2015, Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

[56]  P. Churchland Perceptual Plasticity and Theoretical Neutrality: A Reply to Jerry Fodor , 1988, Philosophy of Science.

[57]  Barbara Landau,et al.  The Necessity of the Medial Temporal Lobe for Statistical Learning , 2014, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[58]  V. Moro,et al.  Selective deficit of mental visual imagery with intact primary visual cortex and visual perception , 2008, Cortex.

[59]  Moshe Bar,et al.  Visual predictions in the orbitofrontal cortex rely on associative content. , 2014, Cerebral cortex.

[60]  J. Fodor The Modularity of mind. An essay on faculty psychology , 1986 .

[61]  P. C. Murphy,et al.  Cerebral Cortex , 2017, Cerebral Cortex.

[62]  R. Poldrack,et al.  Measuring neural representations with fMRI: practices and pitfalls , 2013, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.

[63]  O. Deroy,et al.  Object-sensitivity versus cognitive penetrability of perception , 2013 .

[64]  Lester C. Loschky,et al.  Top-down and bottom-up influences on observation: Evidence from cognitive psychology and the history of science. In A. Raftopoulos (Ed.), Cognitive penetrability of perception: Attention, action, strategies, and bottom-up constraints.(pp. 31-47). , 2004 .

[65]  Wayne Wu,et al.  Visual spatial constancy and modularity: Does intention penetrate vision? , 2013 .

[66]  B. Brogaard,et al.  The Long-Term Potentiation Model for Grapheme-Color Binding in Synesthesia , 2015 .

[67]  Lester C. Loschky,et al.  TOP-DoWN AND BOTTOM-UP INFLUENCES ON OBSERVATION : EVIDENCE FROM COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY AND THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE , 2010 .

[68]  J. Haynes A Primer on Pattern-Based Approaches to fMRI: Principles, Pitfalls, and Perspectives , 2015, Neuron.

[69]  F. Macpherson Cognitive Penetration of Colour Experience: Rethinking the Issue in Light of an Indirect Mechanism , 2012 .

[70]  D. Sagi,et al.  Top-Down Modulation of Lateral Interactions in Early Vision Does Attention Affect Integration of the Whole or Just Perception of the Parts? , 2003, Current Biology.

[71]  J. Prinz Is the mind really modular , 2005 .

[72]  M Mishkin,et al.  Neural substrates of visual stimulus-stimulus association in rhesus monkeys , 1993, The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience.

[73]  C. Koch,et al.  Continuous flash suppression reduces negative afterimages , 2005, Nature Neuroscience.

[74]  F. D. de Lange,et al.  Prior Expectations Bias Sensory Representations in Visual Cortex , 2013, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[75]  A. Clark Whatever next? Predictive brains, situated agents, and the future of cognitive science. , 2013, The Behavioral and brain sciences.

[76]  Christian Lebiere,et al.  Behavioral and Brain Sciences Cognitive Architectures Combine Formal and Heuristic Approaches Powered by Editorial Manager® and Preprint Manager® from Aries Systems Corporation , 2012 .

[77]  Frank Tong,et al.  The Functional Impact of Mental Imagery on Conscious Perception , 2008, Current Biology.

[78]  D. Stokes Perceiving and desiring: a new look at the cognitive penetrability of experience , 2012 .

[79]  Lei Mo,et al.  Electrophysiological evidence for the left-lateralized effect of language on preattentive categorical perception of color , 2011, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[80]  Janneke F. M. Jehee,et al.  Less Is More: Expectation Sharpens Representations in the Primary Visual Cortex , 2012, Neuron.

[81]  A Reeves,et al.  How visual imagery interferes with vision. , 1992, Psychological review.

[82]  J. Hohwy The Predictive Mind , 2013 .

[83]  Alison J. Wiggett,et al.  Unconscious effects of language-specific terminology on preattentive color perception , 2009, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.