Gaze-track representation in high-level visual cortex

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Stefan Pollmann
• Subject Area: Biological Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience ; Human Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience
• Term: since 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 450600965

When we look at a face, we carry out distinctive eye movements leading to gaze paths that can easily be discriminated from the gaze paths elicited by other objects. It is well-known that frontal and parietal areas support the planning and execution of such eye movements. However, we recently showed that face and house-specific gaze tracks can be decoded in the fusiform face area (FFA) and the parahippocampal place area (PPA) - even in the absence of a face or house to look at. We concluded that action (gaze) patterns are represented in high-level visual cortex, demonstrating a potential neural basis for close interactions of perception and action. While we think we have presented solid evidence for this counterintuitive mapping of complex gaze patterns in high-level perceptual areas, many questions as to their nature and function remain. In the first experiment of the present proposal, we want to investigate the nature of this novel finding, specifically at what time the critical information is represented in a gaze track and if it is coded in the sequence or rather the location of fixations. In a second experiment, we want to learn if the gaze tracks elicited when identifying a face respectively identifying a facial emotion expression are represented in different perceptual brain areas. Finally, we plan to investigate if microsaccades elicited during face viewing are represented in a similar way as saccades in the FFA.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants