Frank Schuman
Research theme
Active sensing, top-down influences in perception, natural behaviour, natural stimuli
In this project, we used an innovative technique to record eye-movements in perticipants who freely explore various environments (forest, train station, apartment). We found that a substantial fraction of eye movements point in the same direction as co-occurring head movements. Hence non-saccadic ("reflexive") eye movements that interact synergistically with head movements to adjust gaze cannot be neglected in natural visual input. This means that natural input on the retina is continuously dynamic, and cannot be faithfully modeled as a mere sequence of static images. In further stages of the project, we will analyze top-down inferences in the selection of attended locations under different tasks in natural exploration.
Video and experimental material