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Abstract:
As we move about a room, inspecting its contents, we ordinarily do not
confuse our own change of viewpoint with changes in the content of the
scene. As we move, the image of a single object or location may fall
successively on parts of the retina with markedly different optical
qualities and photoreceptor densities. Yet we typically manage not to
confuse the particular characteristics of a retinal region with the
appearance of an object imaged on it. An object fixated and then
viewed in periphery does not seem to move or change. nor does an
object first viewed peripherally and then fixated, although, once
fixated, we are likely able to answer questions about the detailed
appearance of the fixated object that we could not answer when it was
viewed peripherally.
This transformational constancy is all the more remarkable if
we examine the initial visual information, the pattern of excitation
of photoreceptors in each retinal region. This chapter analyzes the
retina as a sampling array in motion, discussing the consequences of
motion for reconstruction, aliasing, and visual representation.
