Facilitation of perceptual filling-in for spatio-temporal frequency of dynamic textures

Objects are perceived to fade and disappear within a few seconds under certain conditions when a small object surrounded by a moving texture is presented in human peripheral vision. This phenomenon is called perceptual filling-in or fading. Investigation of filling-in properties is important to understand visual information capture and processing. Previous studies have adopted filling-in time to evaluate the facilitation of filling-in. From this viewpoint, we propose a model of the filling-in process to address the phenomenon by which a small homogeneous area (filling-in target), which is surrounded by spatio-temporal frequency limited random-dot dynamic textures, is presented to an observer's peripheral vision (Proc.IC-EMBS2003). The model expresses target distinguishability from the surrounding texture. This study measured time to filling-in for various spatio-temporal frequencies of target-surrounding dynamic textures. Spatio-temporal frequency sensitivity of human vision was also estimated. Applying these results to the proposed model, it was suggested that M-channel pathway of LGN facilitates perceptual filling-in. In contrast, the P-channel pathway is assumed not to facilitate, but rather inhibit, filling-in.