<title>Three-dimensional vision and figure-ground separation by visual cortex</title>

Abstract

A theory of 3-D visual perception and figure/ground separation by visual cortex is described. Called FACADE Theory it suggests a solution of the 3-D figure/ground problem for biological vision and makes many predictions whereby it can be tested. The theory further develops my 3-D vision theory of 1987 which used multiple receptive field sizes or scales to define multiple copies of two interacting systems: a Boundary Contour System (BCS) for generating emergent boundary segmentations of edges textures and shading and a Feature Contour System (FCS) for discounting the illuminant and filling in surface representations of Form-And-Color-And-DEpth or FACADEs. The 1987 theory did not posit interactions between the several scales of the BCS and FCS. The present theory suggests how competitive and cooperative interactions that were previously defined within each scale also act between scales. 2 / SPIE Vol. 1382 Intelligent Robots and Computer Vision IX: Neural Biological and 3-D Methods (1990)