A Two Stage Energy Model Exhibiting Selectivity to Changing Disparity

Abstract

We show that by cascading the disparity energy model and the motion energy model, we obtain neurons that are selective for changing disparity, which is a cue that biological systems may use in the perception of stereo-motion. We demonstrate that the outputs of this model exhibit joint tuning to disparity and stereo-motion. The output achieves a peak response for an input with a preferred disparity that also changes at a preferred rate. The joint tuning curve in the disparity–change of disparity space is approximately separable. We further demonstrate that incorporating a normalization step between the two stages reduces the variability of the model output.