The goal of this project is to test a model of top-down visual processing by noninvasive means in alert human observers. According to this model, the CNS actively explores the visual input, interacting with it through its endogenous activity. The interactions result in a temporal encoding of visual information that will be called visually modulated endogenous activity (VMEA). This response component does not need to correlate directly with abrupt changes in stimulus features and therefore eludes the commonly used techniques of stimulus-locked averaging. The existence of this component can be predicted in any system where the input interacts nonlinearly with fast endogenous processes and has been demonstrated in our pilot study using unconventional analysis tools. It shares many properties with the stimulus dependent synchronized high frequency oscillations found in animal studies. The method used in this study demodulates the endogenous carrier by means of nonlinear operations to retrieve its visual content. One of our aims is to optimize the stimulation and demodulation technique for the problem at hand.
Other aims are to investigate ? the characteristics of the VMEA component and the role it may play in human visual perception. Specifically, we will study its dependence on the attentional state of the subject. We will investigate its dependence on stimulus geometry and color and we will compare the VMEA responses to random patterns with those to meaningful images with similar brightness contrast distributions. ? ?
