Less than meets the eye: How do computers — or our brains — recognize images?

We do not merely recognize objects — our brain is so good at this task that we can automatically supply the concept of a cup when shown a photo of a curved handle or identify a face from just an ear or nose. Neurobiologists, computer scientists, and robotics engineers are all interested in understanding how such recognition works — in both human and computer vision systems. New research suggests that there is an “atomic” unit of recognition — a minimum amount of information an image must contain for recognition to occur.
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