Vision, Attention and Eye Movements at the Scale of the Foveola

项目总结 人类依靠中心凹探索，这是视网膜中视锥细胞最密集的区域 高分辨率的视觉场景。虽然中心凹只覆盖了视觉fi区的一小部分- 大约满月大小，这一地区的破坏每天对大多数人都会造成毁灭性的后果 视觉活动。然而，主要由于技术挑战，人们对这种机制知之甚少。 中心凹视觉和人类获得高视觉敏锐度的感觉运动策略。 研究黄斑中心凹功能的一个主要困难来自于fi对视网膜刺激的控制需要。在… 由于不确定性，这种将刺激放置并保持在所需偏心率的规模是不同的fi崇拜 在定位凝视中心(通常与中心凹本身一样大)时，由于连续的视网膜 由fi眼球运动引起的运动，人类持续不断的缓慢眼球漂移和小眼跳 表演。PI和她的同事最近绕过了这些限制，开发了新的方法 用于绘制凝视中心的视觉功能图。他们的研究表明，图案视觉各不相同 注意力和眼球运动都被精确地控制在这个范围内。 这些先前的fi发现提出了一个基本假设：高视力视力不会自动跟随 从把刺激放在中心凹上，但它是视觉，运动， 和注意成分，它们密切合作，从fiNe空间信息中顺序地提取 中央凹区域。这个项目旨在研究这一假设，在三个相互关联的目标上， 我们将研究注意力在高锐度视觉中的作用(目标1)，以及它是如何被微眼跳(AIM)调制的 3)，以及注意力和微眼跳如何处理fine模式视觉加工中的限制(目标2)。 具体地说，在目标1中，我们将在我们之前关于fine控制自愿注意的工作的基础上 研究这种现象的空间分辨率、它的时间动力学以及它是否延伸 不由自主地注意到。在目标2中，我们将绘制整个中心凹空间的视觉敏锐度图，并检查视觉 中心凹内的敏锐度和拥挤程度各不相同。在目标3中，我们将研究MI的精确度和精密度。 交叉连接，它们对缓解敏锐度和拥挤的生理限制的贡献，以及它们之间的联系 在中心凹内进行注意力控制。我们将研究视觉、注意力和眼球运动活动之间的相互作用。 IED不仅在总体上(观察员的平均结果)，而且在个人层面上，以确定 注意和运动控制的程度是否相同，以及后者是否与特质有关 敏锐度的差异。我们的主要假设是fine空间视觉是感觉运动相互作用的结果 承担着几个重要的后果。这增加了注意和fixa的次优控制的可能性- 选择性眼球运动可能会导致高视力障碍。这项研究可能会为可视化开辟道路 根据fine控制眼球运动和注意力的康复程序。

PROJECT SUMMARY Humans rely on the foveola, the region of the retina where cones are most densely packed, for exploring the visual scene at high resolution. Although the foveola only covers a tiny portion of the visual field— approximately the size of a full moon—, damage to this area has devastating consequences for most daily visual activities. Yet, primarily as a consequence of technical challenges, little is known about the mechanisms of foveal vision and the sensorimotor strategies by which humans achieve high visual acuity. A major difficulty in studying foveal functions comes from the need to finely control retinal stimulation. At this scale, both placing and maintaining a stimulus at a desired eccentricity is difficult, because of uncertainty in localizing the center of gaze (typically as large as the foveola itself), and because of the continual retinal motion caused by fixational eye movements, the slow eye drifts and small saccades that humans continually perform. The PI and her coworkers have recently circumvented these limitations and developed new methods for mapping visual functions at the very center of gaze. Their research has shown that pattern vision varies sharply across the foveola, and that both attention and eye movements are precisely controlled at this scale. These previous findings raise a fundamental hypothesis: high acuity vision does not follow automatically from placing the stimulus on the foveola, but it is the outcome of an orchestrated synergy of visual, motor, and attentional components, which closely cooperate to sequentially extract fine spatial information from the foveal region. This project is designed to investigate this hypothesis, in three strongly inter-connected aims, we will examine the role of attention in high acuity vision (Aim 1), how it is modulated by microsaccades (Aim 3), and how both attention and microsaccades deal with limits in visual processing of fine patterns (Aim 2). Specifically, in Aim 1, we will build upon our previous work on the fine control of voluntary attention within the foveola and study the spatial resolution of this phenomenon, its temporal dynamics, and whether it extends to involuntary attention. In Aim 2, we will map visual acuity across the foveal space and examine how visual acuity and crowding vary within the foveola. In Aim 3, we will investigate the accuracy and precision of mi- crosaccades, their contributions to alleviating physiological limitations in acuity and crowding, and their links to attentional control within the foveola. The interplay of vision, attention, and oculomotor activity will be stud- ied not just in general terms (average results across observers) but also at the individual level, to determine whether the degree of attentional and motor control covary and whether the latter is linked to idiosyncratic differences in acuity. Our main hypothesis that fine spatial vision is the outcome of a sensorimotor interaction bears several important consequences. It raises the possibility that sub-optimal control of attention and fixa- tional eye movements may contribute to high acuity impairments. This research may open the way for visual rehabilitation procedures that act on the fine control of eye movements and attention.