Influence of Head and Eye Movements on Retinal Input and Early Neural Encoding

头部和眼睛运动对视网膜输入和早期神经编码的影响

• 批准号: 1836558
• 负责人: Michele Rucci
• 金额: $ 9.19万
• 依托单位: University of Rochester
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2018-05-01 至 2019-02-28
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1836558&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Influence; Head; Eye; Movements; Retinal

Humans are normally not aware that their eyes and head are always in motion. Small involuntary head and eye movements continually occur in the periods between voluntary relocations of gaze, even when attempting to maintain steady gaze on a single point. These movements shift the stimulus on the retina in ways that would be immediately visible had the motion originated from objects in the scene rather than the observer's behavior. Building on a large body of recent findings, this project investigates the hypothesis that fixational head and eye movements are not motor instabilities, but part of a precisely controlled motor strategy that facilitates the visual processing of fine spatial detail. Elucidation of this hypothesis is important not only for advancing knowledge on the fundamental mechanisms of visual perception, but also because it implies that some visual acuity impairments may have unrecognized motor origins, and, conversely, that motor disturbances may have unsuspected sensory consequences. The research could have implications for the optimization of human visual performance in situations of restricted head movement. Also, by shedding light on how to achieve optimal sampling of visual information through coordinated movement, the research could also have implications for the design of artificial vision systems.This project will follow an integrated theoretical and experimental approach, which combines psychophysical experiments with human subjects, statistical analysis of the stimulus on the retina, and modeling of neurons in the early stages of the visual system to examine the joint consequences of head and eye movements on the acquisition and encoding of fine spatial information. Specifically, the investigators will measure fixational head and eye movements during the normal execution of high-acuity visual tasks. They will study how these movements interact, the degree of control involved in their interplay, and the nature of this interplay. In parallel, the investigators will develop quantitative predictions by reconstructing the visual input signals experienced by the observers' retinas and by analyzing the impact of these signals on the responses of computational models of neurons in the visual system. This synergy of experimental and theoretical methods will result in new knowledge in the fields of sensory perception and motor control. It will contribute critical information on the joint characteristics of fixational head and eye movements, their visual functions, and help in identifying the sensory-motor strategies by which spatial information is represented in the brain.

人类通常不会意识到他们的眼睛和头部总是在运动。 小的无意识的头部和眼睛运动持续发生在两次有意识的视线转移之间，即使是在试图保持稳定的注视一个点的时候。 这些运动改变了视网膜上的刺激，如果运动起源于场景中的物体，而不是观察者的行为，那么这些运动将立即可见。 建立在一个大的身体最近的研究结果，该项目调查的假设，即固定的头部和眼睛的运动不是运动不稳定性，但一个精确控制的运动策略，促进精细的空间细节的视觉处理的一部分。 阐明这一假说不仅对于增进视知觉基本机制的知识很重要，而且还因为它意味着某些视敏度损伤可能具有未被识别的运动起源，相反，运动障碍可能具有未被怀疑的感觉后果。这项研究可能对在头部运动受限的情况下优化人类视觉表现具有影响。此外，通过阐明如何通过协调运动实现视觉信息的最佳采样，该研究还可以对人工视觉系统的设计产生影响。该项目将遵循综合理论和实验方法，将心理物理实验与人类受试者相结合，对视网膜上的刺激进行统计分析，以及视觉系统早期阶段的神经元建模，以检查头部和眼睛运动对精细空间信息的获取和编码的联合后果。 具体来说，研究者将测量在正常执行高敏锐度视觉任务期间的头部和眼球运动。他们将研究这些运动如何相互作用，它们相互作用中涉及的控制程度，以及这种相互作用的性质。 与此同时，研究人员将通过重建观察者视网膜所经历的视觉输入信号，并通过分析这些信号对视觉系统神经元计算模型反应的影响，来进行定量预测。 这种实验和理论方法的协同作用将导致感官知觉和运动控制领域的新知识。 它将有助于关键信息的联合特点的固定头部和眼睛的运动，他们的视觉功能，并帮助识别的感觉运动策略，空间信息是在大脑中表示。