Project description
The dynamics of active perception
The human experience of a stable, continuous world belies the fragmented input caused by our rapid eye movements, or saccades, as we explore our surroundings. While critical to perception, these movements are often studied in artificial, passive setups that fail to capture the dynamic interplay between natural gaze and real-world stimuli. Understanding active perception across saccades requires precise, real-time methodologies; yet current techniques fall short, hindered by the transient nature of peri-saccadic phenomena. The ERC-funded FREE-VIEW project tackles this challenge by combining cutting-edge psychophysical, computational, and neuroscientific tools. By predicting saccades during dynamic exploration and integrating gaze-contingent measures, FREE-VIEW will revolutionise active perception studies and expand research accessibility to diverse populations, from children to non-human primates.
Objective
We constantly move our eyes to explore our surroundings. In between short periods of fixation, saccades cause drastic changes to the visual input – yet, we experience a continuous and stable world from the incessant flow of snapshots. While the perceptual consequences of saccadic eye movements are manifold, experiments to study them are surprisingly similar, and lean towards a paradoxically passive investigation of active visual perception. Instead of isolated, stereotyped eye movements directed by artificial cues, everyday gaze is dynamically driven by scene statistics and internal goals. To genuinely understand active perception across eye movements, we need to study it under natural but still precisely controlled conditions – which so far has been hindered by methodological limitations: the transient nature of peri-saccadic phenomena requires real-time knowledge of the upcoming saccade to tailor the perceptual measurement to its predicted spatial and temporal dynamics.
Fortunately, free-viewing saccades are not random, but guided by salient and relevant scene features. My team and I will introduce a methodology that evaluates these factors online, to predict saccades during free exploration on dynamic visual noise. To study active perception through gaze-contingent measures across unconstrained viewing, my approach integrates high-precision yet rigid techniques from classic vision science with more flexible but coarser methods of scene viewing research, where subtle peri-saccadic processes are traditionally not considered.
Combining state-of-the-art psychophysical, computational, and neuroscientific expertise, FREE-VIEW will pioneer our understanding of actually active perception and gaze control, assess the validity of inferences drawn from atypical, instructed saccades, and introduce a versatile tool for testing populations that may struggle to learn or adhere to stringent instructions, such as children, the elderly, patients, or non-human primates.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
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CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
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Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2024-STG
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10117 Berlin
Germany
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