Visual perception during movements of the eyes and head

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Visual perception is an integral part of conscious experience, and so it is not surprising that nearly half the human brain is devoted to the processing of visual images. Equally important for accurate visual perception is the ability to move the eyes, head, and body. Such movements allow us to explore our surroundings thoroughly, but they also introduce abrupt changes in the incoming visual images. Nevertheless, our perception of the visual world is quite stable, indicating that the visual processing centres of the brain contain mechanisms that compensate for such disturbances. Understanding how the brain accomplishes this feat is one of the most important questions in neuroscience, as it bears on the more general question of how the brain uses feedback from its own motor commands to achieve accurate and stable sensory processing. Indeed the issue of feedback motor control is of general interest in a number of domains, ranging from robotics to the design of human-machine interfaces. During the last NSERC grant period, my laboratory, along with collaborators at the Montreal Neurological Institute, has been actively involved in understanding how the brain interprets visual signals during eye movements. We have found evidence for a general computation that takes into account the spatial and temporal properties of the eye movement and enhances certain kinds of visual signals to compensate. In the upcoming grant period we will extend our research to include visual perception during head movements. Our goal is to isolate, through behavioral testing and single-neuron recording, the brain mechanisms that contribute to stable visual perception during eye and head movements in naturalistic settings.