"The basic unit of visual perception is NOT a 2D sinewave."
You're right, it's not the basic unit, but there's evidence that one of the basic elements of visual perception is a 2D sine wave. The receptive fields of some neurons in the human visual cortex can be modeled using Gabor functions, which consist of a plane wave and a Gaussian function. This model is useful in describing and modeling patern perception and edge detection.
Slashdot Mirror
You're right, it's not the basic unit, but there's evidence that one of the basic elements of visual perception is a 2D sine wave. The receptive fields of some neurons in the human visual cortex can be modeled using Gabor functions, which consist of a plane wave and a Gaussian function. This model is useful in describing and modeling patern perception and edge detection.