Mechanisms of surface-based selection

我们依靠愿景来指导我们的行动。由于眼睛可以获得的信息比大脑可以同时处理的信息要多，因此我们的视觉系统被认为具有有限的能力。为了克服这个瓶颈，大脑有机制优先处理视觉信息的子集。一个这样的过程是基于表面的选择，其已经被示出为选择两个重叠的透明表面中的一个。例如，当驾驶汽车时，驾驶员关注汽车前方的道路，而不是其上有虫子或污垢的挡风玻璃，即使脏挡风玻璃共享相同的视野。 该建议的目的是阐明基于表面的选择的机制。第一组实验研究不同的刺激特性如何调节基于表面的选择。 这些实验将通过确定哪些特征可以调节表面选择来限制表面选择的机制，了解这些边界条件将有助于确定选择的位点和选择发生的最早阶段。 第二组实验确定调节基于表面的选择的特征是并行工作还是同一机制的一部分。这将测试组合特征是否对选择有附加、倍增或没有附加影响。不同的特征可能彼此具有不同的关系。研究结果将有助于模拟不同特征对表面表示和基于表面的选择的相对贡献。因此，这些实验将限制产生选择的可能生理机制。 更好地理解基于表面的选择和表面表示将增加我们对基本特征如何结合在一起形成对象的知识。这些结果也将对与注意力和物体处理有关的各种神经系统疾病，如自闭症和精神分裂症产生影响。

We rely on vision to guide our actions. As there is more information available to the eyes than the brain can process simultaneously, our visual system is said to have limited capacity. To overcome this bottleneck, the brain has mechanisms to preferentially process a subset of the visual information. One such process is surface-based selection, which has been shown to select one of two overlapping transparent surfaces. For example, when driving a car, the driver attends to the road in front of car instead of the windshield with bugs or dirt on it, even though the dirty windshield shares the same field of view.   The aim of this proposal is to elucidate the mechanisms of surface-based selection. The first set of experiments investigates how different stimulus characteristics modulate surface-based selection.  These experiments will constrain the mechanism(s) of surface-based selection by determining which characteristics can modulate it. Knowing these boundary conditions will help determine the locus of selection and the earliest stage(s) at which this selection is occurring.   The second set of experiments determines whether the characteristics that modulate surface-based selection work in parallel or are part of the same mechanism. This would test whether combining characteristics has an additive, multiplicative or no additional influence on selection. Different characteristics may have different relationships with each other. The results will facilitate modeling the relative contributions of different characteristics on surface representations and surface-based selection. Thus, the experiments will constrain the possible physiological mechanisms giving rise to selection.   A better understanding of surface-based selection and surface representation will lead to an increase in our knowledge of how basic features are bound together into an object. The results will also have implications for a variety of neurological disorders linked to attention and object-processing, such as autism and schizophrenia.