Project description
Investigating the mechanisms of premotor foveal perception
To leverage the central part of the visual field (the fovea) where vision is sharpest, humans frequently make rapid eye movements that bring relevant information into high-acuity foveal vision. Despite its crucial role in perception, visual processing in the fovea is surprisingly understudied, particularly in actively moving observers. Funded by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the ActiveFovea project will establish a comprehensive knowledge base on movement-contingent foveal processing, combining human psychophysics with high-precision digital dual Purkinje eyetracking, electrophysiological recordings in non-human primates and eye-head tracking in a large-field display environment. Building on the investigators’ prior work, ActiveFovea aims to transform the prevailing understanding of foveal vision from a passive recipient of high-acuity input to a dynamic and predictive component of active perception.
Objective
Human vision is sharpest in the central 5.5 degrees of the visual field (the fovea) and becomes increasingly blurry towards the periphery. In everyday situations, we frequently execute large-scale eye movements called saccades to inspect objects of interest with high-acuity foveal vision. Despite its crucial importance for human perception, foveal vision is surprisingly understudied, particularly in the actively moving observer. Perhaps most detrimental to its study is the simple assumption that foveal vision is saturated and uninfluenced by ongoing motor processes; much like the lens of a microscope, visual perception in the center of gaze is presumed to reflect the ground truth of our environment. Nonetheless, I have previously demonstrated that right before a saccadic eye movement, defining features of the eye movement target (such as its orientation content) are predictively enhanced in foveal vision, resulting in substantial modulations of visual perception in the area of highest acuity. ActiveFovea builds on these findings by combining several cutting-edge methodologies, namely human psychophysics, high-precision Dual-Purkinje-eyetracking, primate electrophysiology and eye-head-tracking in a 360° display environment, under a common aim: transforming our understanding of foveal vision from a passive recipient of high-acuity input to a dynamic and predictive component of active perception. In four work packages, and with the involvement of leading experts in the field, ActiveFovea will investigate the spatiotemporal and featural properties of premotor foveal perception in different species and across different body movement types. Ultimately, we hope to establish foveal vision as a research area well worth investigating and aim to provide a seminal knowledge base that will guide future studies for years to come.
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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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)
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
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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.
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-GF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - Global Fellowships
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Call for proposal
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(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2024-PF-01
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10117 Berlin
Germany
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