The dual nature of visual cognition

当前提案中的研究围绕着人类必须克服的一个根本和普遍的问题；我们视野中的信息比我们在任何给定时刻都能成功处理的信息多得多。为了克服这个问题，注意力系统对视野中的信息进行初步的、快速的评估，然后工作记忆系统促进我们有意识地报告所看到的东西。这项研究的目标是更好地了解注意力系统以及它是如何与工作记忆系统相互作用的。为了做到这一点，我们将通过两组精心设计的实验来研究脑电(EEG)设备提供的高时间分辨率脑成像测量。其中一组实验将提供对涉及将注意力分配到视野不同区域的神经过程的洞察。第二组实验将专门研究工作记忆过程对注意力分配的作用。综合起来，这两组相关的实验将提供有关人类如何从环境中获取和理解视觉信息的重要信息。

The research in the current proposal revolves around one of the fundamental and pervasive problems humans must overcome; there is considerably more information in our visual field than we can successfully process at any given moment.  To overcome this problem, the attention system makes an initial, rapid evaluation of the information in the visual field and then the working memory system facilitates the conscious report of what we have seen.  The goal of this research is to better understand the attention system and how it interacts with the working memory system.  To do so, we will examine high temporal resolution brain imaging measurements available from electroencephalogram (EEG) equipment in two carefully constructed sets of experiments.  One set of experiments will provide insights into the neural processes that are involved in allocating attention to various regions of the visual field.  A second set of experiments will specifically examine the role that working memory processes have on the allocation of attention.  Together, these two related sets of experiments will provide important information as to how humans obtain and make sense of the visual information from their environment.