Description du projet
Percepts basés sur la mémoire et capacité visuelle
Les données empiriques sur la capacité visuelle suggèrent que les personnes ne perçoivent et ne se souviennent que d’une partie de leur environnement même si elles rapportent de manière subjective de riches expériences visuelles. L’hypothèse avancée est que les expériences perceptives sont enrichies par les connaissances que nous possédons déjà sur le monde. Le projet MemoryBasedPercepts, financé par l’UE, étudie comment les percepts basés sur la mémoire sont instanciés dans le cerveau, et s’ils peuvent être différenciés des souvenirs qui n’enrichissent pas ce que nous voyons. Le projet combinera des méthodes correlationnelles et neurocognitives causales pour décrire le profil spatiotemporel des percepts basés sur la mémoire grâce à l’imagerie par résonance magnétique fonctionnelle (IRMf) et la magnétoencéphalographie (MEG). En recourant à la stimulation magnétique transcrânienne (SMT), les chercheurs examineront si l’activité du cortex visuel est indispensable à l’apparition des percepts basés sur la mémoire.
Objectif
"As soon as we open our eyes, we have the immediate impression of a richly detailed visual world. However, the empirical data on visual capacity suggest that people perceive and remember strikingly little of the world around them. Why people think they are highly skilled in visual perception when the empirical evidence shows that they see so little? One exciting possibility is that our perceptual experiences represent more than the physical visual input, in that they are rather constructed based on prior knowledge. Indeed, particularly when the visual information in input is limited or absent, our memories about the world allow to fill-in the visual scene, thereby generating the visual experience of objects that are subjectively perceived, but objectively not visible. These memory-based percepts may allow to render the rich visual world that people perceive, independently of capacity-limited sensory processing. In this project I ask how memory-based percepts are instantiated in the brain, and whether they are distinct from memories that do not elicit the subjective impression of seeing an object. To answer this question, I will make use of a combination of correlational and causal neurocognitive methods. First, I will characterise the spatiotemporal profile of memory-based object percepts via functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and Magnetoencephalography (MEG). Then, I will use Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) to test whether activity of visual cortex is causally necessary for memory-based percepts to arise. The present studies will elucidate whether visual cortex determines our visual experiences beyond the sensory information in input. In doing so, they speak to the broader question of whether there is a ""joint"" between perception and cognition towards a better understanding of the content of our phenomenological experiences."
Champ scientifique
Programme(s)
Régime de financement
MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)Coordinateur
6525 XZ Nijmegen
Pays-Bas