Maintaining a common map of locations: remapping multi-sensory targets during eye movements

• Applicants: Professor Patrick Cavanagh, Ph.D.; Professor Dr.-Ing. Heiner Deubel; Professor Dr. Jan Theeuwes
• Subject Area: General, Cognitive and Mathematical Psychology ; Human Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience
• Term: from 2012 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 217694770

A hallmark of human performance is our ability to focus actions on an enormous variety of targets ¿ a brief visual glimpse of an item of interest, a sound, a touch to our body, an object we wish to pick up. The purpose of this grant is to study whether the brain uses a common map of target positions, independent of their origin, in order to interact effectively with them. To do so, we will look for the signature of errors of visual constancy when judgments of target locations in other modalities made at the time of an eye movement. We will approach this question with behavioral psychophysics and brain imaging techniques to measure effects of targeting on attention and position judgments across modalities. We are introducing several innovative methods that rely on the combinations of skills across our three laboratories and that will allow us to address the question directly.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: France, Netherlands
• Cooperation Partner: Professorin Thérèse Collins, Ph.D.