Vid elektroencefalografi (EEG) används intermittent ljusstimulering för att detektera eventuell fotoparoxysmal reaktion (PPR) hos patienter, som tecken på en fotosensitivitet och stöd för en misstanke om epilepsi. Intermittent ljusstimulering innebär att patienten exponeras för en stroboskoplampa som ger ljus med frekvenser mellan 1–60 Hz. PPR karaktäriseras av spikes, spike-waves eller polyspike-waves som uppkommer bilateralt och synkront, symmetriskt och generaliserat. Intermittent ljusstimulering är en provokation som utförs vid rutin-EEG som tolkas på Skånes universitetssjukhus mellan 6 månader och 70 års ålder. Studier har dock visat att PPR sällan provoceras fram i äldre åldersgrupper. För äldre åldersgrupper kan det istället vara till större förmån att använda andra former av provokationer. Syftet med studien var att kartlägga förekomsten av PPR i olika åldersgrupper. Åldersfördelningen studerades på patienter med PPR som undersökts med rutin-EEG vilka tolkades på Skånes universitetssjukhus under perioden 2017-2020. Av 4050 rutin-EEG hade 3821 utfört intermittent ljusstimulering. Av dessa hade 1,4 % PPR med ett medelvärde av åldern på 17 år och standardavvikelse på 10 år. PPR var vanligare hos yngre (p<0,001) och 91 % av patienterna med PPR var under 30 år. PPR var även vanligare hos kvinnor (p<0,001) och motsvarade 84 % av undersökningarna med PPR. Konklusionen av studien är att PPR är vanligare hos kvinnor och patienter under 30 år. / Electroencephalography (EEG) uses intermittent photic stimulation to detect possible photoparoxysmal response (PPR) in patients, as a sign of photosensitivity and as a contribution in the diagnosis of a suspected epilepsy. Intermittent photic stimulation means that the patient is exposed to flashing lights from a stroboscope lamp that provides light with frequencies between 1–60 Hz. PPR is characterized by spikes, spike-waves or polyspike-waves that occur bilaterally and synchronously, symmetrically and generalized. Intermittent photic stimulation is a provocation performed during routine-EEG that is interpreted at Skåne university hospital between 6 months and 70 years of age. However, studies have shown that PPR is rarely provoked in older age groups. For older age groups, it may instead be a greater advantage of using other forms of provocative methods. The purpose of this study was to map how common PPR is in different age groups. The age distribution was studied on patients with PPR who were examined with a routine EEG that was interpreted at Skåne university hospital during the period 2017-2020. Of the 4050 routine EEG, 3821 had performed intermittent photic stimulation. Of these 1.4 % had PPR with a mean age value of 17 years and a standard deviation of 10 years. PPR was more common in younger age groups (p<0.001) and 91% of the patients with PPR were younger than 30 years old. PPR was also more common in females (p <0.001), corresponding to 84 % of the examinations with PPR. The conclusion of the study is that PPR is more common in females and in patients younger than 30 years old.

No / Evidence suggests than human time perception is likely to reflect an ensemble of recent temporal experience. For example, prolonged exposure to consistent temporal patterns can adaptively realign the perception of event order, both within and between sensory modalities (e.g. Fujisaki et al., 2004 Nat. Neurosci., 7, 773-778). In addition, the observation that 'a watched pot never boils' serves to illustrate the fact that dynamic shifts in our attentional state can also produce marked distortions in our temporal estimates. In the current study we provide evidence for a hitherto unknown link between adaptation, temporal perception and our attentional state. We show that our ability to use recent sensory history as a perceptual baseline for ongoing temporal judgments is subject to striking top-down modulation via shifts in the observer's selective attention. Specifically, attending to the temporal structure of asynchronous auditory and visual adapting stimuli generates a substantial increase in the temporal recalibration induced by these stimuli. We propose a conceptual framework accounting for our findings whereby attention modulates the perceived salience of temporal patterns. This heightened salience allows the formation of audiovisual perceptual 'objects', defined solely by their temporal structure. Repeated exposure to these objects induces high-level pattern adaptation effects, akin to those found in visual and auditory domains (e.g. Leopold & Bondar (2005) Fitting the Mind to the World: Adaptation and Aftereffects in High-Level Vision. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 189-211; Schweinberger et al. (2008) Curr. Biol., 18, 684-688).

Yes / The headscarf conceals hair and other external features of a head (such as the ears). It therefore may have implications for the way in which such faces are perceived. Images of faces with hair (H) or alternatively, covered by a headscarf (HS) were used in three experiments. In Experiment 1 participants saw both H and HS faces in a yes/no recognition task in which the external features either remained the same between learning and test (Same) or switched (Switch). Performance was similar for H and HS faces in both the Same and Switch condition, but in the Switch condition it dropped substantially compared to the Same condition. This implies that the mere presence of the headscarf does not reduce performance, rather, the change between the type of external feature (hair or headscarf) causes the drop in performance. In Experiment 2, which used eye-tracking methodology, it was found that almost all fixations were to internal regions, and that there was no difference in the proportion of fixations to external features between the Same and Switch conditions, implying that the headscarf influenced processing by virtue of extrafoveal viewing. In Experiment 3, similarity ratings of the internal features of pairs of HS faces were higher than pairs of H faces, confirming that the internal and external features of a face are perceived as a whole rather than as separate components. / The Educational Charity of the Federation of Ophthalmic and Dispensing Opticians.

In this study human color constancy was tested for two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) setups with real objects and lights. Four different illuminant changes, a natural selection task and a wide choice of target colors were used. We found that color constancy was better when the target color was learned as a 3D object in a cue-rich 3D scene than in a 2D setup. This improvement was independent of the target color and the illuminant change. We were not able to find any evidence that frequently experienced illuminant changes are better compensated for than unusual ones. Normalizing individual color constancy hit rates by the corresponding color memory hit rates yields a color constancy index, which is indicative of observers' true ability to compensate for illuminant changes.

Diss. (sammanfattning) Linköping : Linköpings universitet, 2009. / Härtill 5 uppsatser.

In a visual search experiment, the subject must find a target item hidden in a display of other items, and their performance is measured by their reaction time (RT). Here I look at how visual search reaction times are correlated with past reaction times. Target-absent RTs (i.e. RTs to displays that have no target) are strongly correlated with past target-absent RTs and, treated as a time series, have a 1/f power spectrum. Target-present RTs, on the other hand, are effectively uncorrelated with past RTs. A model for visual search is presented which generates search RTs with this pattern of correlations and power spectra. In the model, search is conducted by matching search items up with "categorizers," which take a certain time to categorize each item as target or distractor; the RT is the sum of categorization times. The categorizers are drawn at random from a pool of active categorizers. After each search, some of the categorizers in the active pool are replaced with categorizers drawn from a larger population of unused categorizers. The categorizers that are not replaced are responsible for the RT correlations and the 1/f power spectrum.

Edges are important visual features, providing many cues to the three-dimensional structure of the world. One of these cues is edge blur. Sharp edges tend to be caused by object boundaries, while blurred edges indicate shadows, surface curvature, or defocus due to relative depth. Edge blur also drives accommodation and may be implicated in the correct development of the eye's optical power. Here we use classification image techniques to reveal the mechanisms underlying blur detection in human vision. Observers were shown a sharp and a blurred edge in white noise and had to identify the blurred edge. The resultant smoothed classification image derived from these experiments was similar to a derivative of a Gaussian filter. We also fitted a number of edge detection models (MIRAGE, N(1), and N(3)(+)) and the ideal observer to observer responses, but none performed as well as the classification image. However, observer responses were well fitted by a recently developed optimal edge detector model, coupled with a Bayesian prior on the expected blurs in the stimulus. This model outperformed the classification image when performance was measured by the Akaike Information Criterion. This result strongly suggests that humans use optimal edge detection filters to detect edges and encode their blur.

Area V3A was identified in five human subjects on both a functional and retinotopic basis using functional magnetic resonance imaging techniques. V3A, along with other visual areas responsive to motion, was then targeted for disruption by repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) whilst the participants performed a delayed speed matching task. The stimuli used for this task included chromatic, isoluminant motion stimuli that activated either the L-M or S-(L+M) cone-opponent mechanisms, in addition to moving stimuli that contained only luminance contrast (L+M). The speed matching task was performed for chromatic and luminance stimuli that moved at slow (2 degrees/s) or faster (8 degrees/s) speeds. The application of rTMS to area V3A produced a perceived slowing of all chromatic and luminance stimuli at both slow and fast speeds. Similar deficits were found when rTMS was applied to V5/MT+. No deficits in performance were found when areas V3B and V3d were targeted by rTMS. These results provide evidence of a causal link between neural activity in human area V3A and the perception of chromatic isoluminant motion. They establish area V3A, alongside V5/MT+, as a key area in a cortical network that underpins the analysis of not only luminance but also chromatically-defined motion.

No / Postural instability in older people is associated with an increased risk of falling. This experiment investigated the effects of different gaze strategies on postural stability in older people, when using distance single-vision compared with multifocal (progressive addition lens and bifocal) spectacles. METHODS: Eighteen healthy older habitual multifocal spectacle-wearers (mean age 72.1 +/- 4.0 years) participated in a randomised, cross-over study. Postural stability during quiet standing was assessed as the root mean square excursion in the centre of pressure (RMS-COP) in the antero-posterior direction. Ground reaction force data were collected (for 30 seconds), while subjects viewed one of two visual targets (one square metre) of different spatial frequencies and contrasts, while wearing either distance single-vision or multifocal (progressive addition and bifocal) spectacles. The visual targets were positioned either ahead at eye-level or on the ground (viewing distance 2.06 metres) and viewed under the following head-gaze conditions; 'head neutral-gaze forward', 'head flexed-gaze down' and 'head neutral-gaze down'. RESULTS: The type of spectacles worn or the target viewed had no significant effect on postural stability but postural stability deteriorated (antero-posterior RMS-COP excursion increased) in the 'head neutral-gaze down' compared with the 'head flexed-gaze down' and 'head neutral-gaze forward' conditions (5.9, 5.5 and 5.0 mm respectively, p < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Multifocal use had no effect on standing postural stability. Irrespective of spectacles worn, when fixating a visual target positioned at ground level, postural stability was better in the 'head flexed-gaze down' condition compared with the 'head neutral-gaze down' condition. A useful strategy to reduce falling in the older person might be to advise multifocal and distance single-vision spectacle-wearers to flex their heads rather than just lower their eyes when looking downwards.

In this paper, we investigate how controlled changes to image properties and orientation affect eye movements for repeated viewings of images of natural scenes. We make changes to images by manipulating low-level image content (such as luminance or chromaticity) and/or inverting the image. We measure the effects of these manipulations on human scanpaths (the spatial and chronological path of fixations), additionally comparing these effects to those predicted by a widely used saliency model (L. Itti & C. Koch, 2000). Firstly we find that repeated viewing of a natural image does not significantly modify the previously known repeatability (S. A. Brandt & L. W. Stark, 1997; D. Noton & L. Stark, 1971) of scanpaths. Secondly we find that manipulating image features does not necessarily change the repeatability of scanpaths, but the removal of luminance information has a measurable effect. We also find that image inversion appears to affect scene perception and recognition and may alter fixation selection (although we only find an effect on scanpaths with the additional removal of luminance information). Additionally we confirm that visual saliency as defined by L. Itti and C. Koch's (2000) model is a poor predictor of real observer scanpaths and does not predict the small effects of our image manipulations on scanpaths.