Many Gestalt phenomena have been described in terms of perception of a whole being not
equal to the sum of its parts. It is unclear how these phenomena emerge in the brain. We …

The question of how local image features on the retina are integrated into perceived global
shapes is central to our understanding of human visual perception. Psychophysical …

Perceptual grouping of the bounding contours of objects is a crucial step in visual scene
understanding and object recognition. The standard perceptual model for this task …

Illusory figure completion demonstrates the ability of the visual system to integrate
information across gaps. Mechanisms that underlie figural emergence support the …

Symmetry and repetition are recognized as cues in perceptual organization, but there is
disagreement on whether they are detected automatically. This disagreement is resolved by …

Contrary to the traditional view that shapes and their hierarchical level (local or global) are a
priori integrated in perception, recent evidence suggests that the identity of a shape and its …

Background Experience can alter how objects are represented in the visual cortex. But
experience can take different forms. It is unknown whether the kind of visual experience …

When symmetry is present in the retinal image, a symmetry-sensitive network in the
extrastriate visual areas activates, and response magnitude scales with degree of regularity …

Humans rely heavily on shape similarity among objects for object categorization and
identification. Studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have shown that …

Previous studies have argued that faces and other objects are encoded in terms of their
deviation from a class prototype or norm. This prototype is associated with a smaller neural …