Neural Encoding of Scene Statistics for Surface and Object Inference
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Introduction Visual scenes are often complex and ambiguous to interpret because of the myriad causes that generate them. To understand visual scenes, our visual systems have to rely on our prior experience and assumptions about the world. These priors are rooted in the statistical correlation structures of visual events in our experience. They can be learned and exploited for probabilistic inference in a Bayesian framework using graphical models. Thus, we believe that understanding the statistics of natural scenes and developing graphical models with these priors for inference are crucial for gaining theoretical and computational insights to guide neurophysiological experiments. In this chapter, we will provide our perspective based on our work on scene statistics, graphical models, and neurophysiological experiments. An important source of statistical priors for inference is the statistical correlation of visual events in our natural experience. In fact, it has long been suggested in the psychology community that learning due to coherent covariation of visual events is crucial for the development of Gestalt rules (Koffka 1935) as well as models of objects and object categories in the brain (Gibson 1979; Roger and McClelland 2004). Nevertheless, there has been relatively little research on how correlation structures in natural scenes are encoded by neurons. Here, we will first describe experimental results obtained from multielectrode neuronal recording in the primary visual cortex of awake-behaving monkeys. Each study was conducted on at least two animals. These results reveal mechanisms at the neuronal level for the encoding and influence of scene priors in visual processing.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.010 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".