Vision allows us to live a little bit in the future, to see things and react to them before they actually bump into us. The advantages of vision to an organism are overwhelming and, of all of the predictive functions of vision, the perception of motion is arguably the most valuable: it explicitly and rapidly deals with not just where things are but where things are going. In fact, the advantages of motion perception are so great that two very different motion systems appear to have emerged independently in the human visual system. The goal of this grant is to define and characterize the least understood of these two systems, the """"""""high-level"""""""" motion system. Our work has shown that the high-level system appears to be based on selection and pursuit of targets by attention, a system analogous in many ways to the smooth pursuit system of eye movements. Attentive tracking is a critical part of many everyday activities - driving, playing sports, and responding to dynamic computer displays. Understanding its limitations and mechanisms in isolation from the properties of low-level motion detectors is crucial to understanding human performance in demanding environments. I propose to study the role of attention in high-level vision in normals and in individuals with damage to the parietal region, an area involved in attention. To isolate the high-level motion system, we must also understand the low-level system which is based on directionally selective neurons in the visual cortex. Several experiments are planned to identify low-level processes and catalog their number and properties. We also will continue to examine the smooth pursuit system used when tracking targets with eye movements. Our early results show that high-level motion signals may play a significant role in initiating and correcting smooth pursuit. Finally, we look at how the visual system identifies the position of stimuli despite constant large and small motions of the eye. We have discovered a stabilization system, a """"""""Steadycam"""""""" process, based on low-level motion signals that keeps the world stable despite movement and vibration of the eye. We will continue our work on these projects and begin a new project on the perception of stimuli from outside the visual field. In this last study we will stimulate the retina through the sclera and address the question of how the perceived location of object is corrected for the direction of gaze. We will examine whether the early responses to the stimulation are gated out of awareness for directions of gaze where the stimulated retinal location corresponds to a location outside the normal visual field. In these final studies I will test normal and neurological subjects and record brain activation using fMRI.
| Wu, Daw-An; Cavanagh, Patrick (2016) Where are you looking? Pseudogaze in afterimages. J Vis 16:6 |
| Störmer, Viola S; Alvarez, George A; Cavanagh, Patrick (2014) Within-hemifield competition in early visual areas limits the ability to track multiple objects with attention. J Neurosci 34:11526-33 |
| Macdonald, James S P; Cavanagh, Patrick; VanRullen, Rufin (2014) Attentional sampling of multiple wagon wheels. Atten Percept Psychophys 76:64-72 |
| Cavanagh, Patrick; Anstis, Stuart (2013) The flash grab effect. Vision Res 91:8-20 |
| Franconeri, Steven L; Alvarez, George A; Cavanagh, Patrick (2013) Flexible cognitive resources: competitive content maps for attention and memory. Trends Cogn Sci 17:134-41 |
| Kosovicheva, Anna A; Maus, Gerrit W; Anstis, Stuart et al. (2012) The motion-induced shift in the perceived location of a grating also shifts its aftereffect. J Vis 12: |
| Cohen, Michael A; Cavanagh, Patrick; Chun, Marvin M et al. (2012) The attentional requirements of consciousness. Trends Cogn Sci 16:411-7 |
| Cavanagh, Patrick (2011) Visual cognition. Vision Res 51:1538-51 |
| Hunt, Amelia R; Cavanagh, Patrick (2011) Remapped visual masking. J Vis 11:13 |
| Holcombe, Alex O; Linares, Daniel; Vaziri-Pashkam, Maryam (2011) Perceiving spatial relations via attentional tracking and shifting. Curr Biol 21:1135-9 |
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