Neural mechanisms underlying adaptive optimization of visual sensitivity

描述（由申请人提供）：感觉生物学的基本原则之一是感觉系统适应环境变化。有人认为，适应应具有优化对新环境的敏感性的效果。为了使这一前提具体和精确，拟议的研究建立在视觉运动感知的规范理论，认为视觉系统将通过平衡刺激和测量的不确定性来最佳地适应。该理论将视觉时空敏感性预测为环境统计的函数：自适应优化应该表现为观察者和底层运动敏感神经元的时空敏感性的变化。这项研究将测试这些预测。适应对视觉灵敏度的影响将在视觉运动速度的神经元表征的背景下进行研究。采用特定速度的适应将被用作改变环境统计的一种手段。将记录这种适应的感知和神经后果，期望灵敏度变化将反映优化的建模过程。拟议的研究构成了一个丰富的交织收集的心理物理，神经生理学和理论方法的主题视觉适应。实验的目的是产生一个前所未有的全面的数据轴承的灵长类动物视觉系统的时空特性和环境变化的影响。这些数据将用于进一步理解适应的现象学和机制。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): One of the fundamental tenets of sensory biology is that sensory systems adapt to environmental change. It has been argued that adaptation should have the effect of optimizing sensitivity to the new environment. To make this premise concrete and precise, the proposed research builds on a normative theory of visual motion perception, which argues that the visual system will adapt optimally by balancing stimulus and measurement uncertainties. This theory makes predictions about visual spatiotemporal sensitivity as a function of environmental statistics: Adaptive optimization should be manifested as a change in spatiotemporal sensitivity for an observer and for the underlying motion-sensitive neurons. The proposed research will test these predictions. The effects of adaptation on visual sensitivity will be examined in the context of the neuronal representation of speed of visual motion. Adaptation using specific speeds will be used as a means to effect a change in environmental statistics. Both perceptual and neuronal consequences of this adaptation will be recorded, with the expectation that sensitivity changes will reflect the modeled process of optimization. The proposed research constitutes a richly interwoven collection of psychophysical, neurophysiological and theoretical approaches to the topic of visual adaptation. Experiments have been designed to yield an unprecedented body of comprehensive data bearing on the spatiotemporal properties of the primate visual system and the effects of environmental change. These data will be used to further understanding of the phenomenology and mechanism of adaptation.