Three doses of vitamin D, bone mineral density, and geometry in older women during modest weight control in a 1-year randomized controlled trial.

The effects of higher than recommended vitamin D doses on bone mineral density (BMD) and quality are not known. In this study, higher intakes, in postmenopausal women undergoing weight control over 1 year, had no effect on areal or volumetric BMD but prevented the deterioration in cortical bone geometry. INTRODUCTION: Studies examining how bone responds to a standard dose of vitamin D supplementation have been inconsistent. In addition, the effects of higher doses on BMD and quality are not known. Postmenopausal women undergoing weight control to improve health outcomes are particularly at risk for bone loss and might benefit from supplemental vitamin D intake above the recommended allowance. METHODS: This 1-year-long, randomized, double-blind controlled study addresses whether vitamin D supplementation, in healthy overweight/obese older women, affects BMD and bone structural parameters. In addition, bone turnover and serum total, free, and bioavailable 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25OHD) responses to one of three daily levels of vitamin D3 (600, 2000, 4000 IU) with 1.2 Ca g/day during weight control were examined. RESULTS: Fifty-eight women (age, 58 ± 6 years; body mass index, 30.2 ± 3.8 kg/m2, serum 25OHD, 27.3 ± 4.4 ng/mL) were randomized to treatment. After 1 year, serum 25OHD concentrations increased to 26.5 ± 4.4, 35.9 ± 4.5, and 41.5 ± 6.9 ng/mL, in groups 600, 2000, and 4000 IU, respectively, and differed between groups (p < 0.01). Weight change was similar between groups (-3.0 ± 4.1 %). Cortical (Ct) thickness of the tibia changed by -1.5 ± 5.1 %, +0.6 ± 3.2 %, and +2.0 ± 4.5 % in groups 600, 2000, and 4000 IU, respectively, and each group was significantly different from each other (p < 0.05). CONCLUSION: The decline in Ct thickness was prevented with higher vitamin D3 supplementation, but there were no other significant changes due to treatment over 1 year. Whether these findings translate to changes in biomechanical properties leading to reduced fracture risk should be addressed in future studies.

Contextual modulation of orientation discrimination is independent of stimulus processing time.

Contextual inhibition of neural activity in the primary visual cortex begins immediately and is most pronounced in the early transient response component. Using backward masking to control available processing time, we investigated whether the interaction between perceptual contextual modulation and processing time reflects the neural dynamics of contextual inhibition. We found that the threshold elevation due to contextual inhibition in an orientation-discrimination task is essentially independent of the available processing time and that it is closely related to contextual inhibition of the early transient response component of orientation-selective neurons in the primary visual cortex.

The Bayesian image retrieval system, PicHunter: theory, implementation, and psychophysical experiments.

This paper presents the theory, design principles, implementation and performance results of PicHunter, a prototype content-based image retrieval (CBIR) system. In addition, this document presents the rationale, design and results of psychophysical experiments that were conducted to address some key issues that arose during PicHunter's development. The PicHunter project makes four primary contributions to research on CBIR. First, PicHunter represents a simple instance of a general Bayesian framework which we describe for using relevance feedback to direct a search. With an explicit model of what users would do, given the target image they want, PicHunter uses Bayes's rule to predict the target they want, given their actions. This is done via a probability distribution over possible image targets, rather than by refining a query. Second, an entropy-minimizing display algorithm is described that attempts to maximize the information obtained from a user at each iteration of the search. Third, PicHunter makes use of hidden annotation rather than a possibly inaccurate/inconsistent annotation structure that the user must learn and make queries in. Finally, PicHunter introduces two experimental paradigms to quantitatively evaluate the performance of the system, and psychophysical experiments are presented that support the theoretical claims.

Attention-based texture segregation.

Luminance- or color-defined +/- 45 degrees-oriented bars were arranged to yield single-feature or double-conjunction texture pairs. In the former, the global edge between two regions is formed by differences in one attribute (orientation, or color, or luminance). In the color/orientation double-conjunction pair, one region has +45 degrees red and -45 degrees green textels, the other -45 degrees red and +45 degrees green textels (the luminance/orientation double-conjunction pair is similar); such a pair contains a single-feature orientation edge in the subset of red (or green) textels, and a color edge in the subset of +45 degrees (or -45 degrees) textels. We studied whether edge detection improved when observers were instructed to attend to such subsets. Two groups of observers participated: in the test group, the stimulus construction was explained to observers, and they were cued to attend to one subset. The control group ran through the same total number of sessions without explanations/cues. The effect of cuing was week but statistically significant. Feature cuing was more effective for color/orientation than for luminance/orientation conjunctions. Within each stimulus category, performance was nearly the same no matter which subset was attended to. On average, a global performance improvement occurred over time even without cuing, but some observers did not improve with either cuing or practice. We discuss these results in the context of one-versus two-stage segregation theories, as well as by reference to signal enhancement versus noise suppression. We conclude that texture segregation can be improved by attentional strategies aimed to isolate specific stimulus features.

Local versus global contrasts in texture segregation.

In a texture pair (TP) yielding a vertical or horizontal edge, the local (luminance or color) contrast or the local orientation of the individual textels is traded off with the global strength of the luminance-, color-, or orientation-defined TP edge so as to keep the latter at the detection threshold. Local and global contrasts are defined along the same (within-domain conditions) or along distinct physical dimensions (transdomain conditions). In the latter case local luminance or color contrast is traded off against global orientation. In all cases TP's are presented for 66.7 or 333.3 ms. Textels differ from the background in either luminance or color so that the TP's are respectively equichromatic or equiluminant. TP edge strength is modulated by means of swapping variable proportions of textels between the two textures in the TP. The observed local--global relationships are fitted with a version of the equivalent noise model for contrast coding modified to include the presentation time factor. The extension of the standard model in the time domain is meant to allow comparison between equivalent noise estimates for variable duration stimuli. Model fits of the within-domain data yield equivalent noise energy values significantly different for color- and luminance-defined TP's but are not applicable for the transdomain experiments, which indicates that global orientation processing is independent of both local luminance and local color contrast insofar as the latter are above the detection threshold. Finally, this study points to the equivalence among the local--global, the equivalent noise, and the statistical approaches to texture segregation.

A new stereoscopic illusion: eyes popping out and sinking in.

A stereoscopic illusion is produced by manipulating the binocular disparity of the irises in stereo pairs of human faces. These stimuli elicit unnatural percepts of the irises popping out of the face or sinking in inside the head.

A human vision based computational model for chromatic texture segregation.

We have developed a computational model for texture perception which has physiological relevance and correlates well with human performance. The model attempts to simulate the visual processing characteristics by incorporating mechanisms tuned to detect luminance-polarity, orientation, spatial frequency and color, which are characteristic features of any textural image. We obtained a very good correlation between the model's simulation results and data from psychophysical experiments with a systematically selected set of visual stimuli with texture patterns defined by spatial variations in color, luminance, and orientation. In addition, the model predicts correctly texture segregation performance with key benchmarks and natural textures. This represents a first effort to incorporate chromatic signals in texture segregation models of psychophysical relevance, most of which have treated grey-level images so far. Another novel feature of the model is the extension or the concept of spatial double opponency to domains beyond color, such as orientation and spatial frequency. The model has potential applications in the areas of image processing, machine vision and pattern recognition, and scientific visualization.

When the brain changes its mind: interocular grouping during binocular rivalry.

The prevalent view of binocular rivalry holds that it is a competition between the two eyes mediated by reciprocal inhibition among monocular neurons. This view is largely due to the nature of conventional rivalry-inducing stimuli, which are pairs of dissimilar images with coherent patterns within each eye's image. Is it the eye of origin or the coherency of patterns that determines perceptual alternations between coherent percepts in binocular rivalry? We break the coherency of conventional stimuli and replace them by complementary patchworks of intermingled rivalrous images. Can the brain unscramble the pieces of the patchwork arriving from different eyes to obtain coherent percepts? We find that pattern coherency in itself can drive perceptual alternations, and the patchworks are reassembled into coherent forms by most observers. This result is in agreement with recent neurophysiological and psychophysical evidence demonstrating that there is more to binocular rivalry than mere eye competition.

Precise assessment of the mean effective luminance of texture patches--an approach based on reverse-phi motion.

In studying the response of mechanisms to contrast-defined texture stimuli, it is critical that the average effective luminance of these textures be equal to that of the background, to minimize net luminance-based signals. We present an efficient and accurate technique for constructing such equiluminant textures to isolate contrast-sensitive mechanisms for investigating their properties. The technique is based on the reverse-phi motion phenomenon, and the resulting settings agree closely with those obtained by photometric means for the class of textures studied. The method also allows one to explore the properties of contrast- and luminance-driven motion mechanisms and, in particular, to evaluate the contribution of putative second-order mechanisms to the motion percept. Results of applying the method are presented, and its advantages over the minimum-flicker and minimum-motion techniques are discussed.

Interactions of monocular and cyclopean components and the role of depth in the Ebbinghaus illusion.

A study of size interactions of objects in three-dimensional space is reported. The canonical form of the Ebbinghaus illusion-test circles surrounded by large or small inducers-was used. Both monocularly visible (M) and purely cyclopean (C) objects were displayed stereoscopically to isolate the monocular and cyclopean components of the illusion. The results of two experiments indicate that: (i) depth plays a significant role when the test circles are cyclopean, but not when they are monocularly visible; and (ii) the size of C objects is affected equally by C and M inducers, but the size of M objects is affected much more strongly by M than by C inducers. In conclusion, possible explanations are offered for the main trends in the data, the most interesting of which is that cyclopean tests seem to be interacting only with the cyclopean component of monocularly visible inducers.

Two motion systems with common and separate pathways for color and luminance.

We present psychological experiments that reveal two motion systems, a specific and an unspecific one. The specific system prevails at medium to high temporal frequencies. It comprises at least two separate motion pathways that are selective for color and for luminance and that do not interact until after the motion signal is extracted separately in each. By contrast, the unspecific system prevails at low temporal frequencies and it combines color and luminance signals at an earlier stage, before motion extraction. The successful implementation of an efficient and accurate technique for assessing equiluminance corroborates further the main findings. These results offer a general framework for understanding the nature of interactions between color and luminance signals in motion perception and suggest that previously proposed dichotomies in motion processing may be encompassed by the specific/unspecific dichotomy proposed here.

Motion perception with spatiotemporally matched chromatic and achromatic information reveals a "slow" and a "fast" motion system.

Recent reports dealing with apparent motion challenged the standard view according to which motion processing should be impossible if the visual attributes matched across space and time are processed in independent channels (the similarity principle). The present work examines this possibility insofar as it relates to the spatiotemporal combination of pure chromatic and pure luminance information. The data indicate that the "similarity principle" is indeed infringed at low (< or = 2.5 Hz, i.e. velocities of 2.5 deg/sec for spatial modulations of 1 c/deg, in this study) but not at high (> or = 7.5 Hz) temporal frequencies. The fact that colour and luminance may or may not combine to yield motion perception depending on their temporal modulation reconciliates contradictory results in the literature and supports the idea of two motion systems, a "fast"/specific one, integrating information only from similar subunits, and a "slow"/unspecific one, integrating information across dissimilar subunits (in the present case, across the chromatic and achromatic "domains"). This dichotomy is also supported by the finding that chromatic reverse-phi (i.e. with equiluminant, red and green stimuli) can be observed at medium temporal frequencies but is replaced by direct motion at low temporal frequencies, presumably within the range of the "slow"/unspecific system. Using a modified "minimum motion" technique (referred to as the Reverse-Phi equiluminance method) we present data allowing to assess the relative weights of the two systems as a function of temporal frequency.

Sensitivity to colour- and to orientation-carried motion respectively improves and deteriorates under equiluminant background conditions.

This study presents two distinct effects produced by manipulation of the background illumination on the directional sensitivity to colour- and orientation-carried motion. The two motion percepts were produced with two of a class of stimuli extensively used by the first and last authors in apparent-motion studies. The stimuli were designed to produce motion perception by virtue of spatiotemporal matching of (a) colour with orientation systematically mismatched (Colour across Orientation, CxO) and of (b) orientation with colour systematically mismatched (OxC). An increase in background illumination from dark to the equiluminance point (relative to the luminance of the discrete stimulus microelements) entails a significant increase and decrease of directional performances with CxO and OxC stimuli, respectively. It is proposed that these anti-symmetrical background effects have distinct neurophysiological origins. For CxO stimuli, improvement of directional performances at the equiluminant point is presumably due to the inactivation of the inhibitory effect of the luminance-motion pathway on the chromatic-motion pathway. The opposite effect obtained with OxC stimuli, previously referred to as the veto effect (Gorea and Papathomas, 1988 Invest. Ophthal. Vis. Sci. Suppl., 29, 265), is supposed to be entailed by the inactivation of the luminance-oriented mechanism, the only motion sensitive mechanism activated by this stimulus configuration.

Texture segregation by chromatic and achromatic visual pathways: an analogy with motion processing.

We present results to show that texture segregation can be obtained through the so-called coherent spatial grouping of local shape (orientation) and of local color under both nonequiluminant and equiluminant conditions. Color grouping entails texture segregation independent of orientation grouping, while the reverse is not true under equiluminant conditions. The experiments permit the isolation of chromatic- and luminance-oriented mechanisms, as well as of chromatic nonoriented mechanisms, all of which contribute to texture discrimination. As a general rule, the present results (including the asymmetry between color and orientation grouping) are similar to those obtained by us in a series of motion-perception experiments. This similarity suggests that the perceptual rules governing spatial grouping are analogous (if not identical) to those governing spatiotemporal grouping. As in the case of directional discrimination, texture-discrimination performances may be accounted for by the activation of higher-order units receiving inputs from subunits, all of which display similar tuning properties within a multidimensional space.

Two carriers for motion perception: color and luminance.

Starting with the experiments of Ramachandran and Gregory (Nature, 275, 55-56, 1978), several psychophysical studies in apparent motion (AM) have established that the perception of motion is significantly impaired at equiluminance. Still debated, however, is whether color alone can resolve ambiguities in AM. We report here on several psychophysical experiments, the quantitative results of which indicate that color does play a substantial role in AM. These findings seem to support recently proposed neurophysiological frameworks according to which there exist significant interactions among the neuronal pathways mediating the perception of basic visual attributes such as color, motion, form and depth.

Ambiguity in 3-D patterns induced by lighting assumptions.

A bistable pattern is shown with white and black bars with horizontal and vertical orientations which produce an impression of thin slabs stacked up in depth either toward or away from the observer. It is postulated that the ambiguity is induced by the observer's assumption of the direction of the light source.

Motion processing by chromatic and achromatic visual pathways.

We describe a family of stimuli consisting of colored bars of different orientations, which, when presented in rapid succession, may elicit unambiguous motion perception. These stimuli permitted the isolation of directional spatiotemporal information extracted from oriented luminance clues, from nonoriented chromatic-plus-luminance clues, or, when the stimuli were presented under equiluminant conditions, from pure chromatic clues. As a general rule, matching of orientation induces weaker motion-detection performances than does matching of color. When the orientation clues are in competition with the chromatic ones, motion perception based on the former is always overridden by motion perception based on the latter. We indirectly isolated an oriented chromatic mechanism that also contributes to motion perception. We finally showed that, under equiluminant conditions, matching of orientation across different colors is inefficient in eliciting motion perception, either because motion information is extracted poorly across different chromatic channels or because such channels show little orientational selectivity. Because motion strength determined by each of the manipulated attributes follows different functions with the displacement (or velocity) of the stimuli, we propose the existence of three underlying mechanisms, a luminance mechanism, a chromatic-plus-luminance mechanism, and a pure chromatic mechanism, each of which provides motion information.

Stereoscopic illusion based on the proximity principle.

A class of ambiguous random-dot stereograms were created that share the following interesting property: Although the binocular disparity forms a periodic 'sawtooth' waveform as a function of row number (the disparity is constant for a given row), these stimuli yield a monotonically increasing depth percept along the rows. The random-dot pattern of each row is periodic along the horizontal direction for the purpose of producing an ambiguous depth percept. It is this ambiguity that makes it possible for the periodic stimulus to give rise to a monotonic percept. This monotonic percept is substantially enhanced when the rows are shown in temporal sequence instead of all being displayed together. Experiments are reported which indicate that this illusion is due to the proximity, or pulling, effect in stereopsis.