Stabiles Sehen: Die Rolle von Unstetigkeit und Unterbrechung

Vision is a seamless experience. This is perplexing considering the nature of the visual stimulus captured on the back of the eyes. We continuously make small fixational eye movements interspersed with larger exploratory eye movements, keeping the retinal image in constant motion. The extent to which neural mechanisms actively counteract the effect of making an eye movement for the purposes of creating our stable world view is hotly debated. This project takes a neurophysiologically informed, comparative view of the function of the visual brain and translates this into novel testable behavioural and neurophysiological predictions. We review what is known about the sensory systems of non-human animals that use movements to sense and integrate information about their environment to inspire a new approach to perceptual awareness in active human observers. Our objectives are to: 1. Compose a literature review of forms of active sensory sampling in different animal species (whisking, ear movements, saccades) to establish any common, canonical strategies. 2. Derive new experimental paradigms based on these findings to test counter-intuitive predictions of how humans deal or even exploit with discontinuities. 3. Propose a new theoretical framework embracing our findings and providing an ecologically valid account of perceptual awareness.