Mechanisms of surface-based selection

我们依靠愿景来指导我们的行动。由于眼睛接收到的信息比大脑同时处理的信息要多，我们的视觉系统被认为能力有限。为了克服这一瓶颈，大脑具有优先处理视觉信息子集的机制。其中一个这样的过程是基于表面的选择，它已经被证明可以选择两个重叠的透明表面中的一个。例如，当驾驶汽车时，司机关注的是汽车前面的道路，而不是有虫子或污垢的挡风玻璃，即使脏的挡风玻璃共享相同的视野。本提案的目的是阐明基于表面的选择机制。第一组实验研究了不同的刺激特征如何调节基于表面的选择。这些实验将通过确定哪些特征可以调节它来约束基于表面的选择机制。了解这些边界条件将有助于确定选择的轨迹和这种选择发生的最早阶段。第二组实验确定调节基于表面的选择的特征是并行工作还是同一机制的一部分。这将测试组合特征是否对选择有附加的、倍增的或没有附加的影响。不同的特征之间可能有不同的关系。这些结果将有助于对不同特征对表面表示和基于表面的选择的相对贡献进行建模。因此，该实验将约束产生选择的可能生理机制。更好地理解基于表面的选择和表面表示将导致我们对如何将基本特征绑定到一个对象中的知识的增加。研究结果还将对各种与注意力和物体处理有关的神经系统疾病，如自闭症和精神分裂症，产生影响。

We rely on vision to guide our actions. As there is more information available to the eyes than the brain can process simultaneously, our visual system is said to have limited capacity. To overcome this bottleneck, the brain has mechanisms to preferentially process a subset of the visual information. One such process is surface-based selection, which has been shown to select one of two overlapping transparent surfaces. For example, when driving a car, the driver attends to the road in front of car instead of the windshield with bugs or dirt on it, even though the dirty windshield shares the same field of view.   The aim of this proposal is to elucidate the mechanisms of surface-based selection. The first set of experiments investigates how different stimulus characteristics modulate surface-based selection.  These experiments will constrain the mechanism(s) of surface-based selection by determining which characteristics can modulate it. Knowing these boundary conditions will help determine the locus of selection and the earliest stage(s) at which this selection is occurring.   The second set of experiments determines whether the characteristics that modulate surface-based selection work in parallel or are part of the same mechanism. This would test whether combining characteristics has an additive, multiplicative or no additional influence on selection. Different characteristics may have different relationships with each other. The results will facilitate modeling the relative contributions of different characteristics on surface representations and surface-based selection. Thus, the experiments will constrain the possible physiological mechanisms giving rise to selection.   A better understanding of surface-based selection and surface representation will lead to an increase in our knowledge of how basic features are bound together into an object. The results will also have implications for a variety of neurological disorders linked to attention and object-processing, such as autism and schizophrenia.