Simulations of induced visual scene fading with boundary offset and filling-in

Blurred images can appear to fade to uniform brightness and color when viewed with some types of visual transient stimuli. Simons et al. (2006) identified the conditions where such scene fading occurs and noted that their findings were inconsistent with mechanisms that have been used to explain other fading effects. We show that their empirical findings are consistent with a neural model of visual perception that hypothesizes filling-in of brightness and color that is constrained by signals from a boundary contour system. Certain types of transients can weaken the boundary responses and thereby induce scene fading. The simulations explain how even small transient changes can produce scene fading effects across large parts of an image.

► Properties of scene fading are explained with a neural network model of perception. ► Habituation and after-responses are shown to interact with filling-in to produce scene fading. ► The model uses previously proposed mechanisms to explain new effects.