Simplicity in Vision

Perceptual organization is the neuro-cognitive process that enables us to perceive scenes as structured wholes consisting of objects arranged in space. Simplicity in Vision explores the intriguing idea that these perceived wholes are given by the simplest organizations of the scenes. Peter A. van der Helm presents a truly multidisciplinary approach to answer fundamental questions such as: Are simplest organizations sufficiently reliable to guide our actions? What is the nature of the regularities that are exploited to arrive at simplest organizations? To account for the high combinatorial capacity and speed of the perceptual organization process, he proposes transparallel processing by hyperstrings. This special form of distributed processing not only gives classical computers the extraordinary computing power that seemed reserved for quantum computers, but also explains how neuronal synchronization relates to flexible self-organizing cognitive architecture in between the relatively rigid level of neurons and the still elusive level of consciousness.

Peter A. van der Helm is Visiting Professor at the Laboratory of Experimental Psychology at the University of Leuven (KU Leuven), Belgium.

'Van der Helm's book takes us on from the highly influential work of David Marr and his colleagues. Simplicity in Vision is deep but lucid: an important book.' Dr Ian Gordon, Honorary Research Fellow, University of Exeter