Topic: spectral statistics

During natural visual behavior, our visual system extracts multiple features from its inputs and uses them to solve different tasks. Each feature conveys relevant information to different tasks, and for a given task our visual system relies on the relevant features while ignoring others. However, this hypothesis remains largely untested for complex tasks with natural stimuli. Here we compare the role of spectral and higher-order (HOS) texture statistics of the Portilla-Simoncelli model across tasks using natural images, to explain their task-dependent use by humans. Portilla-Simoncelli HOS are