MemoryBasedPercepts · Filling-in the blank: Perceiving through the lens of prior knowledge.
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2022-03-01 → 2024-02-29
- EU contribution
- €175,572
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF
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Results in brief
Filling-in the blank: Perceiving through the lens of prior knowledge.
In this project we aimed to understanding how human perception is supported by one’s memory and prior knowledge of the world. Our research relates to an overarching paradox for vision scientists. That is, people subjectively report a rich visual experience, but empirical findings prove that they rather see very little of what is in view. In other words, people feel as if they can see everything that is presented to their eyes. Yet, several cognitive science studies provide striking demonstrations that people can perceive at once much less than they think, due to capacity limits of the visual information in input (e.g. peripheral vision, inattentional blindness). One possible solution for solving the incongruency between the empirical findings and the subjective reports is to posit that our perceptual operations are constantly supported by and integrated with memories, knowledge, and expectation that people have about the world. This project aimed to perform systematic tests on memory-based perception, with the goal of revealing the how of knowledge effects on visual processing. In our experiments, we used as visual stimuli realistic scenes and common objects, capitalizing on the fact that these are highly familiar to the observers, and therefore can evoke the prior knowledge that people have about them. We expected such knowledge to be integrated with visual operations in the brain, and specifically that visual brain regions would be sensitive to the integration between knowledge and perception. The possibility that human vision represents only partially the processing of image driven physical features and that is rather an inferential process based on our subjective knowledge of the world has implications for understanding the nature of the phenomenology of human experiences and a direct link with other disciplines such as philosophy, psychiatry, and aesthetics.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
As soon as we open our eyes, we have the immediate impression of a richly detailed visual world. However, the empirical data on visual capacity suggest that people perceive and remember strikingly little of the world around them. Why people think they are highly skilled in visual perception when the empirical evidence shows that they see so little? One exciting possibility is that our perceptual experiences represent more than the physical visual input, in that they are rather constructed based on prior knowledge. Indeed, particularly when the visual information in input is limited or absent, our memories about the world allow to fill-in the visual scene, thereby generating the visual experience of objects that are subjectively perceived, but objectively not visible. These memory-based percepts may allow to render the rich visual world that people perceive, independently of capacity-limited sensory processing. In this project I ask how memory-based percepts are instantiated in the brain, and whether they are distinct from memories that do not elicit the subjective impression of seeing an object. To answer this question, I will make use of a combination of correlational and causal neurocognitive methods. First, I will characterise the spatiotemporal profile of memory-based object percepts via functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and Magnetoencephalography (MEG). Then, I will use Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) to test whether activity of visual cortex is causally necessary for memory-based percepts to arise. The present studies will elucidate whether visual cortex determines our visual experiences beyond the sensory information in input. In doing so, they speak to the broader question of whether there is a ""joint"" between perception and cognition towards a better understanding of the content of our phenomenological experiences.""
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- STICHTING RADBOUD UNIVERSITEIT · NijmegenCoordinatorNetherlands
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union