Human object recognition is a classical topic both for philosophy and for the natural sciences. The idea that visual recognition is action oriented developed in philosophy and psychology but inspired the approaches of sensory-motor integration in physiology and active vision in robotics. Attention, originally a psychological concept, is now a hot topic both for the neurosciences and computer science. Indeed, problems of competition among concurrent processes of data analysis, task requirements, and economic allocation of processing resources remain to be solved. Ultimately, understanding of object recognition will be promoted by the cooperation of behavioral research, neurophysiology, and computation.

This book provides an excellent introduction to the issues that are involved, with chapters that address the ways in which humans and machines attend to, recognize, and act toward objects in the visual environment.

Inhalt
An Editorial Overview.- An Editorial Overview.- Object Recognition.- Occlusion Awaits Disclosure.- Functional MRI Evidence for Neural Plasticity at Early Stages of Visual Processing in Humans.- Pattern Recognition in Direct and Indirect View.- Part-Based Strategies for Visual Categorisation and Object Recognition.- Recent Psychophysical and Neural Research in Shape Recognition.- Object Recognition in Humans and Machines.- Prior Knowledge and Learning in 3D Object Recognition.- Neural Representation of Faces in Human Visual Cortex: the Roles of Attention, Emotion, and Viewpoint.- Attention.- Object Recognition: Attention and Dual Routes.- Interactions Between Shape Perception and Egocentric Localization.- Feature Binding in Visual Working Memory.- Biased Competition and Cooperation: A Mechanism of Mammalian Visual Recognition?.- Action.- Influence of Visual Motion on Object Localisation in Perception and Action.- Neural Substrates of Action Imitation Studied by fMRI.- Two Types of Anticipatory-Timing Mechanisms in Synchronization Tapping.