Definition
Figure-ground segregation refers to the capacity of a visual system to rapidly and reliably pick out for greater visual analysis, attention, or awareness, or preparation for motor action, a region of the visual field (figure) that is distinct from the combined areas of all the rest of the visual field (ground). The “figure” region is often, but not necessarily, bounded by a single closed visual contour, and the figure region is often said to “own” the boundary between it and any adjacent regions. The figure region is generally experienced as “in front of” (along lines of sight) surfaces of objects that are in the ground region. Once figure-ground segmentation is achieved, the figure region often delineates a zone of additional attentive visual processing.
Detailed Description
The Importance of Figure-Ground Segregation
Visual function in animals has broadly increased in complexity and competence across eons of evolution, with figure-ground perception being among the later...
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Yazdanbakhsh, A., Mingolla, E. (2019). Figure-Ground Segregation, Computational Neural Models of. In: Jaeger, D., Jung, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Computational Neuroscience. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7320-6_100660-1
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