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Neural model of disinhibitory interactions in the modified Poggendorff illusion

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Abstract

Visual illusions can be strengthened or weakened with the addition of extra visual elements. For example, in the Poggendorff illusion, with an additional bar added, the illusory skew in the perceived angle can be enlarged or reduced. In this paper, we show that a nontrivial interaction between lateral inhibitory processes in the early visual system (i.e., disinhibition) can explain such an enhancement or degradation of the illusory effect. The computational model we derived successfully predicted the perceived angle in the Poggendorff illusion task that was modified to include an extra thick bar. The concept of disinhibition employed in the model is general enough that we expect it can be further extended to account for other classes of geometric illusions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, 77843-3112, USA

    Yingwei Yu & Yoonsuck Choe

  2. Seismic Micro-Technology Inc., Houston, TX, USA

    Yingwei Yu

Authors
  1. Yingwei Yu
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  2. Yoonsuck Choe
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Correspondence to Yingwei Yu.

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Yu, Y., Choe, Y. Neural model of disinhibitory interactions in the modified Poggendorff illusion. Biol Cybern 98, 75–85 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00422-007-0195-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00422-007-0195-8

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