Andrew Isaac Meso

Jonathan Vacher, Andrew Isaac Meso, Laurent U. Perrinet et al.

A common practice to account for psychophysical biases in vision is to frame them as consequences of a dynamic process relying on optimal inference with respect to a generative model. The present study details the complete formulation of such a generative model intended to probe visual motion perception with a dynamic texture model. It is first derived in a set of axiomatic steps constrained by biological plausibility. We extend previous contributions by detailing three equivalent formulations of this texture model. First, the composite dynamic textures are constructed by the random aggregation of warped patterns, which can be viewed as 3D Gaussian fields. Secondly, these textures are cast as solutions to a stochastic partial differential equation (sPDE). This essential step enables real time, on-the-fly texture synthesis using time-discretized auto-regressive processes. It also allows for the derivation of a local motion-energy model, which corresponds to the log-likelihood of the probability density. The log-likelihoods are essential for the construction of a Bayesian inference framework. We use the dynamic texture model to psychophysically probe speed perception in humans using zoom-like changes in the spatial frequency content of the stimulus. The human data replicates previous findings showing perceived speed to be positively biased by spatial frequency increments. A Bayesian observer who combines a Gaussian likelihood centered at the true speed and a spatial frequency dependent width with a "slow speed prior" successfully accounts for the perceptual bias. More precisely, the bias arises from a decrease in the observer's likelihood width estimated from the experiments as the spatial frequency increases. Such a trend is compatible with the trend of the dynamic texture likelihood width.

Jonathan Vacher, Andrew Meso, Laurent U Perrinet et al.

Perception is often described as a predictive process based on an optimal inference with respect to a generative model. We study here the principled construction of a generative model specifically crafted to probe motion perception. In that context, we first provide an axiomatic, biologically-driven derivation of the model. This model synthesizes random dynamic textures which are defined by stationary Gaussian distributions obtained by the random aggregation of warped patterns. Importantly, we show that this model can equivalently be described as a stochastic partial differential equation. Using this characterization of motion in images, it allows us to recast motion-energy models into a principled Bayesian inference framework. Finally, we apply these textures in order to psychophysically probe speed perception in humans. In this framework, while the likelihood is derived from the generative model, the prior is estimated from the observed results and accounts for the perceptual bias in a principled fashion.