[Insight-users] PLoS ONE: Insect Brains Use Image Interpolation Mechanisms to Recognise Rotated Objects

[Luis Ibanez]

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0004086

"Insect Brains Use Image Interpolation Mechanisms
  to Recognise Rotated Objects"

  Adrian G. Dyer1,2*, Quoc C. Vuong3

1 Department of Physiology, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, 
Australia, 2 Institut fur Zoologie III (Neurobologie) Johannes Gutenburg 
Universität, Mainz, Germany, 3 Institute of Neuroscience, Newcastle 
University, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom


Abstract

Recognising complex three-dimensional objects presents significant
challenges to visual systems when these objects are rotated in depth.
The image processing requirements for reliable individual recognition
under these circumstances are computationally intensive since local
features and their spatial relationships may significantly change as an
object is rotated in the horizontal plane. Visual experience is known to
be important in primate brains learning to recognise rotated objects,
but currently it is unknown how animals with comparatively simple brains
deal with the problem of reliably recognising objects when seen from
different viewpoints. We show that the miniature brain of honeybees
initially demonstrate a low tolerance for novel views of complex shapes
(e.g. human faces), but can learn to recognise novel views of stimuli by
interpolating between or ‘averaging’ views they have experienced. The
finding that visual experience is also important for bees has important
implications for understanding how three dimensional biologically
relevant objects like flowers are recognised in complex environments,
and for how machine vision might be taught to solve related visual problems.



in Open Access
at PLoS ONE
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0004086