Unleashing gaze: Neuro-cognitive processes underlying gaze control and perception across free-viewing eye movements

Descripción del proyecto

La dinámica de la percepción activa

La experiencia humana de un mundo estable y continuo se contradice con la información fragmentada que genera nuestros rápidos movimientos oculares, o sacadas, al explorar nuestro entorno. Estos movimientos, aunque son fundamentales para la percepción, suelen estudiarse en entornos artificiales y pasivos que no reflejan la interacción dinámica entre la mirada natural y los estímulos del mundo real. La comprensión de la percepción activa a través de las sacadas requiere metodologías precisas y en tiempo real. No obstante, las técnicas actuales se quedan cortas y se ven limitadas por la naturaleza transitoria de los fenómenos perisacádicos. En el proyecto FREE-VIEW, financiado por el Consejo Europeo de Investigación, se aborda este reto combinando herramientas psicofísicas, informáticas y neurocientíficas punteras. Al predecir los movimientos sacádicos durante la exploración dinámica e integrar medidas dependientes de la mirada, FREE-VIEW revolucionará los estudios de percepción activa y ampliará la accesibilidad de la investigación a diversas poblaciones, desde niños hasta primates no humanos.

Objetivo

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.