The Role of Visual Awareness in Perception, Spatial Attention and Visuomotor Control

A special issue of Brain Sciences (ISSN 2076-3425). This special issue belongs to the section "Behavioral Neuroscience".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 May 2024) | Viewed by 892

Special Issue Editors

Department of Neuroscience, Biomedicine and Movement Sciences, University of Verona, 37134 Verona, Italy
Interests: visual perception; action; body perception; visuospatial attention; motor resonance; TMS; EEG

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Guest Editor
Section of Physiology and Psychology, University of Verona, 37134 Verona, Italy
Interests: cognitive neuroscience; visual awareness; conscious perception; visual processing; TMS; EEG; TMS-EEG; event-related optical signal (EROS)

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Guest Editor
Department of Psychology and Cognitive Science, University of Trento, 38122 Trento, Italy
Interests: visual perception; action; visuomotor control; visual consciousness; fMRI; EEG; visual psychophysics; kinematics; size perception; depth perception; multisensory integration

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Guest Editor
Royal Military Academy, 1000 Brussels, Belgium
Interests: visuo-spatial attention; motor awareness; body awareness; brain stimulation; fMRI; EEG; multisensory integration; moral decision making
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Visual awareness refers to the processes that occur when incoming visual information becomes conscious and leads to the subjective experience of seeing. The study of these processes is at the forefront of contemporary cognitive neuroscience. Remarkably, due to the complexity of this phenomenon, there is still no agreement on its nature, its underlying neural dynamics and, more importantly, its involvement in different functions such as perception, spatial attention and visuomotor control. Is visual awareness always necessary or can these processes operate outside a person’s awareness? This Special Issue welcomes both theoretical and empirical contributions that address these questions using any relevant techniques and methods. With this issue, we aim to provide the reader with new insights into the mechanisms responsible for our conscious perceptual experience during different tasks, and how these mechanisms operate in both healthy and neurological populations.

Dr. Sonia Mele
Dr. Chiara Mazzi
Dr. Irene Sperandio
Dr. Adriana Salatino
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • visual awareness
  • visual perception
  • action
  • visuo-spatial attention
  • visuomotor integration

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

24 pages, 3316 KiB  
Article
Exploring Binocular Visual Attention by Presenting Rapid Dichoptic and Dioptic Series
by Manuel Moreno-Sánchez, Elton H. Matsushima and Jose Antonio Aznar-Casanova
Brain Sci. 2024, 14(5), 518; https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci14050518 - 20 May 2024
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Abstract
This study addresses an issue in attentional distribution in a binocular visual system using RSVP tasks under Attentional Blink (AB) experimental protocols. In Experiment 1, we employed dichoptic RSVP to verify whether, under interocular competition, attention may be captured by a monocular channel. [...] Read more.
This study addresses an issue in attentional distribution in a binocular visual system using RSVP tasks under Attentional Blink (AB) experimental protocols. In Experiment 1, we employed dichoptic RSVP to verify whether, under interocular competition, attention may be captured by a monocular channel. Experiment 2 was a control experiment, where a monoptic RSVP assessed by both or only one eye determines whether Experiment 1 monocular condition results were due to an allocation of attention to one eye. Experiment 3 was also a control experiment designed to determine whether Experiment 1 results were due to the effect of interocular competition or to a diminished visual contrast. Results from Experiment 1 revealed that dichoptic presentations caused a delay in the type stage of the Wyble’s eSTST model, postponing the subsequent tokenization process. The delay in monocular conditions may be further explained by a visual attenuation, due to fusion of target and an empty frame. Experiment 2 evidenced the attentional allocation to monocular channels when forced by eye occlusion. Experiment 3 disclosed that monocular performance in Experiment 1 differs significantly from conditions with interocular competition. While both experiments revealed similar performance in monocular conditions, rivalry conditions exhibit lower detection rates, suggesting that competing stimuli was not responsible for Experiment 1 results. These findings highlight the differences between dichoptic and monoptic presentations of stimuli, particularly on the AB effect, which appears attenuated or absent in dichoptic settings. Furthermore, results suggest that monoptic presentation and binocular fusion stages were a necessary condition for the attentional allocation. Full article
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