Cognitive Neuroscience of Visual Awareness

在大多数情况下，我们的视觉系统被轰炸的信息远远超过了它们所能处理的。由于这种信息过载，大多数视觉信息不是主观体验的，似乎没有被注意到，也没有在大脑中处理。然而，尽管有这种印象，越来越多的证据表明，无意识的视觉信息确实在我们的视觉系统中进行处理，尽管我们仍然没有意识到它。在国家科学基金会的支持下，罗博士和他的同事们将研究有意识和无意识视觉的认知和神经机制。一组实验将使用一些程序，使参与者无意识地呈现一些视觉事件，以确定无意识视觉刺激的表示是否以与有意识感知的处理水平不同的处理水平进行编码。另一组实验将使用对人类初级视觉皮质的经颅磁刺激来操纵神经处理，从而感知视觉事件。这些经颅磁刺激实验将考察有意识和无意识视觉在信息编码、中性结构和皮质通路上的差异，这一研究将为更好地理解人脑中的视觉信息处理提供线索，并为开发有效的视觉障碍患者的补偿策略提供线索。这项工作也有助于为先天性或获得性视力障碍患者开发更好的视觉辅助装置或假体。此外，该项目还将为纽约城市大学城市学院的本科生和研究生以及博士后研究员提供培训机会。这项得到资助的研究结果将广泛传播给科学和非科学受众，并应有助于增进公众对科学的了解。

Under most circumstances, our visual systems are bombarded with much more information than they can handle. Because of this information overload, the majority of visual information is not subjectively experienced and seemingly goes unnoticed as well as unprocessed within the brain. Despite this impression, however, an increasing body of evidence suggests that unconscious visual information is indeed processed within our visual systems even though we remain unaware of it. With support from the National Science Foundation, Dr. Ro and his colleagues will examine the cognitive and neural mechanisms for conscious and unconscious vision. One set of experiments will use procedures that will render some visual events unconscious to participants in order to determine whether the representations of unconscious visual stimuli are encoded at processing levels that are distinct from consciously perceived ones. Another set of experiments will use transcranial magnetic stimulation of the human primary visual cortex to manipulate neural processing and hence awareness of visual events. These transcranial magnetic stimulation experiments will investigate differences in information coding, neutral structures, and cortical pathways for conscious and unconscious vision.This research will provide a better understanding of visual information processing in the human brain and will lend some clues for developing useful compensatory strategies in patients with visual deficits. This work could also contribute towards the development of better visual assistive devices or prostheses for patients with congenital or acquired visual deficits. In addition, this project will provide training opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students and postdoctoral fellows at The City College of the City University of New York. The results of this funded research will be broadly disseminated to both scientific and lay audiences and should contribute towards enhancing scientific understanding by the public.