Visuospatial-cognition
When we look at a scene we feel that we perceive the visual world in all its detail and richness. This
experienced quality and effortlessness of vision masks the fact that scene perception is actually a
highly complex cognitive process, which requires the explorative scanning by eye movements, the
quick and accurate direction of attention, the anticipation of the consequences of actions, and the
integration of current visual input with stored representations of previously viewed parts of the scene
and knowledge of objects and their relationships. A number of striking visual illusions demonstrate that
scene perception is in fact a rather fragile process that essentially builds upon assumptions about the
visual world to optimally piece together the observations taken across multiple fixations. Deficits in
patients that suffer from lesions in diverse parts of the brain as the frontal and parietal cortices, the
cerebellum, and the thalamus show that scene perception is accomplished using a large network of
interconnected areas communicating with each other in feedforward and feedback loops.
The complexity of visuo-spatial cognition can only be understood by analyzing the information transfer in
these loops and the scheduling of behavior and associated perceptual processes.
We propose to combine behavioral and perceptual experiments and high-resolution state-of-the-art functional imaging in normal observers and patients with specific brain lesions with detailed large-scale neurocomputational modeling of the information transfer in cortical and subcortical feedback loops to elucidate the function of this network and the nature of the cognitive deficits that occur when parts of the network are dysfunctional.
We propose to combine behavioral and perceptual experiments and high-resolution state-of-the-art functional imaging in normal observers and patients with specific brain lesions with detailed large-scale neurocomputational modeling of the information transfer in cortical and subcortical feedback loops to elucidate the function of this network and the nature of the cognitive deficits that occur when parts of the network are dysfunctional.