Could this be the phenomenon of pattern recognition? Form of Perception?

In our Neuro Seminar at Loyola University, we welcome guest speakers to talk about their research/ findings that can inform us on the current area of study in the neuroscience field and that may inspire us to investigate in our future work/career. One of the guest speakers’ works I found intriguing was Nicholas Baker’s research on the V1 cortex/visual system in our brain that helps us shape an image from a collection of dots or lines. The title of his article is “The role of vertical mirror symmetry in visual shape detection,” which was originally published by a group of experimentalists at the Laboratory of Experimental Psychology at Maarten Pauwels University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.

   Multiple questions drove this experiment, but the focus was to understand which visual inputs had occupied the same object, in other words, which part of our visual system helps us detect and acknowledge objects. While also debating the law of symmetry and how it does make a great part of our visual system. During the experiment the group touches on Gestaltists and their categories of closure, proximity, continuation, similarity, and symmetry. Which all summarizes the different levels of vision for a person making out an item, and out of all of them, symmetry and proximity are best for detecting shapes and images. Proximity helps the person make sense of the surroundings of the image, since the closer the material is, the more it will relate to the image being created. Thus, for symmetry, it is easier for people to detect the shape of the image or make out what the image will be based on its symmetry. There are also levels of symmetry: translational, reflectional, and centric. Out of the three, reflectional or mirrored symmetry is detected faster than the rest. This level of symmetry is what helps us recognize or detect what an object will be, especially when the symmetry is mirrored vertically. The experimentalists had run tests where patients were faster at recognizing or making out shapes that had vertical mirror symmetry. They also found that even if the collection of dots/lines is rotated, the person can still make out the shape. In the end, the group concludes that the area of the visual system that contains symmetry is overlooked because it is “fast, accurate, and robust”(B.M, M.P, J.W, pg. 3), and it is why we can quickly make imagery out of a collection of items.

Furthermore, this topic relates to an article I’ve found that also focuses on our visual system. The article is named “Illusion-Making Neurons Show How the Brain Constructs Reality” by Peter Kim, who also is taking the time to summarize someone’s experiment. In this article, researchers, referring to the original scientist, Hyeyoung Shin, have come across specialized cells, known as IC-encoder neurons, that influence the brain to see illusions. Which makes the person see shapes and objects that aren’t there, and this process is called “recurrent pattern completion” (Peter Kim, Neuro-News). Where the neurons receive top-down signals from higher visual areas that fill in the contour and surrounding edges of what the person is seeing to make this new image of illusion. And the reason the image isn’t completely correct is because the IC-encoder neurons are at the primary level of the visual cortex, and it receives information on what the higher visual areas sum up the image to be, so when translated back to the primary cortex, the information is broken down to the basic understanding of the object, which shows false views. And the reason the higher visual areas do not see the image correctly is because they are using patterns of recognition to quickly make out the image, and the image could just be a collection of dots that looks like a pig, but it isn’t.

   Now, to relate the articles, I believe both are in the field of studying perception. The first article, from Nicolas Baker, was about the process of forming shapes and objects based on a collection of dots/lines, and the second article, from Peter Kim, was about the visual cortex making out objects and shapes based on pattern recognition but being wrong, which defined illusion. Both studies depended on the V1 cortex to make out an image, but the V1 cortex is best with recognizing edges or the contour of the item. So, I think that the first articles were a form of expanding the knowledge of perception but implicitly, because regardless of the image that was seen from the participants, the material was just a collection of dots/lines that were oriented at different angles. And to add, the participants were best at forming images by vertically mirrored symmetry processing, which means if you separate each side, no matter which side you view the item, you can guess what the other side would be. To follow behind the second article, the researchers knew it was a form of pattern recognition, but that term is a feature of perception. The higher visual cortex can only be wrong about the image because of what it perceived the image to be by previous experiences.

   These researchers have done well in showing how complex our visual system is and that the further you investigate it, the more common and/or tricky the levels are. Future experiments should take the time to also acknowledge these articles as they too try and investigate the visual cortex, because it may send them into a loop that may summarize what was already known.

References

 

Machilsen, B., Pauwels, M. and Wagemans, J. (2009) The role of vertical mirror symmetry in visual shape detection, The role of vertical mirror symmetry in visual shape detection | Jov | Arvo journals. Available at: https://jov.arvojournals.org/article.aspx?articleid=2122115.

 

Allen Institute and Kim, P. (2025) Illusion-making neurons show how the brain constructs reality, Illusion-making neurons show how the brain constructs reality - Neuroscience News. Available at: https://neurosciencenews.com/visual-illusion-perception-neurons-29686/