Attention and sensory integration in active vision of moving objects

为了探索动态的视觉场景，人类--和其他所有灵长类动物一样--结合了联合收割机快速的目光转移（扫视）和平滑的连续跟踪（追踪）运动中的物体。将目光转移到移动的物体上对视觉系统提出了挑战，因为物体在扫视期间继续移动。为了使眼睛落在目标上，在准备扫视期间需要考虑该运动。此外，在每次扫视过程中，场景的其他相关部分（可能本身正在移动）会从根本上改变它们在眼睛后部的位置。事实上，许多参与处理这些场景的视觉脑区继承了这种视网膜组织。那么，我们如何跟踪移动物体的位置，并在面对眼球运动时，持续关注场景中与行为相关的部分呢？在这个项目中，我们将研究如何估计眼动目标的运动，以拦截它们或跟踪它们的位置。我们将使用视线跟踪，视觉心理物理学和计算建模的组合来实现三个目标。(1)我们将建立动态的过程，使视觉系统，以估计和纳入运动准备过程中的运动物体的速度。(2)我们的目标是更好地理解视觉注意力在这一过程中的作用。(3)我们将揭示预测过程是否以及如何更新视觉注意力，以跟踪行为相关的移动物体。最终目标是在功能水平上理解主动视觉处理，并在我们通过动态世界移动时发展感知和行动连续性的连贯理论。

To explore dynamic visual scenes, humans--as all other primates--combine fast gaze shifts (saccades) and smooth continuous tracking (pursuit) of objects in motion. Shifting gaze to a moving object poses challenges to the visual system, as the object continues to move during the saccade. To land the eyes on target, this motion needs to be taken into account during the preparation of the saccade. Moreover, during each saccade, other relevant parts of the scene (that may themselves be moving) radically change their position on the back of the eye. Indeed, many visual brain areas, that are involved in processing these parts of the scene, inherit this retinotopic organization. So how do we keep track of the locations of moving objects and--in the face of eye movements--continuously pay attention to those parts of the scene that are currently relevant for behavior?In this project, we will investigate how we estimate the motion of the targets of eye movements, to intercept them or keep track of their locations. We will use a combination of gaze tracking, visual psychophysics, and computational modeling to achieve three goals. (1) We will establish the dynamics of the processes that enable the visual system to estimate and incorporate the velocity of moving objects during movement preparation. (2) We will aim at a better understanding of the role of visual attention in this process. (3) We shall uncover if and how predictive processes update visual attention to track behaviorally relevant, moving objects across eye movements. The ultimate goal is to understand active visual processing at a functional level and to develop a coherent theory of the continuity of perception and action as we move through a dynamic world.