How we acquire and use visual information to guide movement

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The brain must decide where, when, and how the body is to move under a variety of situations. Although computers can now master board games like chess and Go, the greater complexity of movement explains why bipedal robots still do not match human walking. It is this complexity that challenges the brain's motor decision ability. Imagine navigating a crowded shopping mall or hiking in the forest. Here, the decisions of where to step and which path to walk at each moment are critical. The long-term goal of this program of research is to understand how the brain acquires and uses visual information to make moment-to-moment decisions about movement. The brain can move the eyes to points of interest in the environment to gather useful visual information. The location and timing of these gaze shifts are intimately linked with ongoing motor behaviour and thus gives insight into how the brain makes decisions. What factors influence where, when, and for how long we allocate gaze? How does gaze play a role in ensuring accurate foot placement, that obstacles are avoided, and in selecting the path to take to safely reach our intended destination?******To address these questions, we will determine how the perceived value of the information needed to complete the current behaviour, the environmental uncertainty created by the cluttered, ever-changing, and unpredictable nature of the world, prior experience, and the cost associated with an action affect the way the brain allocates gaze. We will use common walking tasks in our experiments, which include having to step on different terrain or walk around obstacles. Goal-directed, visually guided walking is an excellent model to study decision-making, because it is a natural behaviour that involves a sequence of decisions to get from one place to another. Importantly, experiments will first occur in the lab (and simulate realistic environments) and then move outside of the lab to more natural settings. We will use a state-of-the-art mobile eye tracker to quantify gaze behaviour and high-tech motion capture equipment to quantify movement.******This program of research will advance fundamental knowledge on how the brain decides where to look and where to walk. This work will also help to refine existing, or develop new, computational models of gaze behaviour and motor control. Insight into the factors guiding gaze has implications for the design of visually guided robots, mobility aids (e.g., gaze-controlled devices like wheelchairs), and marketing (including product placement on store shelves). In addition, this will facilitate the development of gaze training interventions that teach people where and when to look when performing different actions. These can be used to improve the mobility of people with eye disease, to teach athletes, and to better train workers in a variety of jobs.