Neural investigation of the dual role of saccadic eye movements in visual perception

人类是高度视觉化的动物，我们的日常经历、记忆和梦想都是由视觉控制的。为了创造连续和无缝的视觉体验，人类通过每秒三到四次眼睛注视来探索他们的环境，每次注视都伴随着快速的眼球跳移到下一个感兴趣的物体上。然而，大多数关于视觉的实验都是由研究参与者进行的，他们被训练保持眼睛不动，以消除这些眼球跳动。这种方法可能无法完全告诉我们，在眼睛自由运动的自然环境下，视觉是如何工作的。在这个项目中，布朗大学的迈克尔·帕拉迪索博士将使用猴子在跳眼运动期间或之后对出现的物体做出视觉决定时的单单元记录。这些数据有望揭示眼球运动如何改变视觉处理，以及大脑如何利用与扫视相关的信号将神经连续体解析成离散的感知块。这些实验的创新之处在于，他们将自然主义范式的行为测试与使用前沿多电极技术的大脑记录相结合。研究人员旨在弥合基础研究与我们对现实世界中人类视觉体验的理解之间的差距。从自闭症到阅读障碍和精神分裂症，许多疾病都表现出异常的眼球运动。目前还不清楚异常眼动是如何与这种疾病相关的，但拟议的项目将提供关键数据，可以作为针对特定疾病的进一步研究的基础。通过这个项目，研究人员将继续给K-12学生讲课，与K-12教师合作进行科学教学，并在布朗大学的催化剂项目中为即将入学的少数民族学生主持一个讨论小组。最后，Paradiso博士将参与大数据工作，提供数据以支持NSF的其他协调工作，这些工作旨在利用STEM相关课程的真实数据进行教学，并使那些原本无法访问这些数据的人能够参与发现科学。

Humans are highly visual animals and our daily experiences, memories, and dreams are dominated by our visual sense. To create the continuous and seamless visual experience, humans explore their environment by making three to four eye fixations every second, each followed by a rapid saccadic eye movement to the next object of interest. However, most experiments on vision are conducted with research participants trained to keep their eyes still to remove these saccadic eye movements. Such an approach may not tell us in full how vision works in its naturalistic context where eyes are freely moving. In this project, Dr. Michael Paradiso of Brown University will use single unit recording from monkeys when they make visual decisions about objects appearing during or just after saccadic eye movements. The data are expected to reveal how eye movements alter visual processing and how the brain is able to parse the neural continuum into discrete perceptual block using signals associated with saccades. These experiments are innovative in their integration of behavioral testing in naturalistic paradigms with brain recordings using leading edge multi-electrode technology. The researcher aims to bridge the gap between basic research and our understanding of human visual experience in the real world. Numerous disorders ranging from autism, to dyslexia and schizophrenia exhibit abnormal eye movements. At the present it is unclear how the abnormal eye movements are involved in the disorder, but the proposed project will provide critical data that can serve as a foundation for further studies targeted at specific disorders. Through the project, the researcher will continue to give lectures to K-12 students, collaborate with K-12 teachers on science instruction, and host a discussion group in Brown's Catalyst Program for incoming minority students at Brown University. Finally, Dr. Paradiso will participate in the big data effort by making the data available to support other coordinated NSF efforts that aim to make use of real data in the teaching of STEM related courses and to enable participation in discovery science by those who would otherwise have no access to such data.