Cognitive Neuroscience of Visual Awareness

视觉意识的认知神经科学

• 批准号: 0843148
• 负责人: Tony Ro
• 金额: $ 55.12万
• 依托单位: CUNY City College
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2009
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2009-10-01 至 2013-09-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0843148&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Cognitive; Neuroscience; Visual; Awareness

Under most circumstances, our visual systems are bombarded with much more information than they can handle. Because of this information overload, the majority of visual information is not subjectively experienced and seemingly goes unnoticed as well as unprocessed within the brain. Despite this impression, however, an increasing body of evidence suggests that unconscious visual information is indeed processed within our visual systems even though we remain unaware of it. With support from the National Science Foundation, Dr. Ro and his colleagues will examine the cognitive and neural mechanisms for conscious and unconscious vision. One set of experiments will use procedures that will render some visual events unconscious to participants in order to determine whether the representations of unconscious visual stimuli are encoded at processing levels that are distinct from consciously perceived ones. Another set of experiments will use transcranial magnetic stimulation of the human primary visual cortex to manipulate neural processing and hence awareness of visual events. These transcranial magnetic stimulation experiments will investigate differences in information coding, neutral structures, and cortical pathways for conscious and unconscious vision.This research will provide a better understanding of visual information processing in the human brain and will lend some clues for developing useful compensatory strategies in patients with visual deficits. This work could also contribute towards the development of better visual assistive devices or prostheses for patients with congenital or acquired visual deficits. In addition, this project will provide training opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students and postdoctoral fellows at The City College of the City University of New York. The results of this funded research will be broadly disseminated to both scientific and lay audiences and should contribute towards enhancing scientific understanding by the public.

在大多数情况下，我们的视觉系统被大量信息轰炸，超出了它们的处理能力。由于这种信息过载，大多数视觉信息没有被主观体验，似乎没有被注意到，也没有在大脑中被处理。然而，尽管有这种印象，越来越多的证据表明，无意识的视觉信息确实在我们的视觉系统中被处理，即使我们没有意识到它。在美国国家科学基金会（National Science Foundation）的支持下，罗博士和他的同事将研究有意识和无意识视觉的认知和神经机制。一组实验将使用一些程序，使一些视觉事件对参与者无意识，以确定无意识视觉刺激的表征是否在不同于有意识感知的加工水平上编码。另一组实验将使用经颅磁刺激人类初级视觉皮层来操纵神经处理，从而对视觉事件产生意识。这些经颅磁刺激实验将研究有意识和无意识视觉的信息编码、中性结构和皮层通路的差异。这项研究将提供对人类大脑视觉信息处理的更好理解，并将为视觉缺陷患者开发有用的代偿策略提供一些线索。这项工作也有助于为先天性或后天视力缺陷患者开发更好的视觉辅助装置或假体。此外，该项目还将为纽约城市大学城市学院的本科生、研究生和博士后提供培训机会。这项获资助的研究成果将广泛传播给科学界和非专业人士，并应有助于增进公众对科学的理解。