Integrative Active Vision

Iain Gilchrist

University of Bristol

(Sponsored by SR-Research)

The Active Vision framework (Findlay and Gilchrist, 2003) argued that eye movement will be central to any successful model of visual perception and cognition: vision is about looking and seeing.

The study of eye movements, and particularly saccadic eye movements, is one of the great success stories of cognitive neuroscience.  The brain networks that supports the generation of saccadic eye movements has been studied in detail for over fifty years and we have a deep understanding of the relationship between behaviour, anatomy and neurophysiology.

However, psychologist and neuroscientist tend to study a single systems in isolation. In this talk I will argue for the need  to understand how the saccadic network interacts with other brain systems and functions. I will review examples of our own research that attempts to address this issue by exploring the relationship between the saccadic system and face processing, reward, response timing and salience. Together these studies describe a rich and complex pattern of interactions.

Any successful model of eye movement behaviour will ultimately need to include the influence of the multiple processes that shape visual perception and cognition. Integrative Active Vision is about understanding how different brain systems and processes work in concert with the eye movement systems to generate integrated, coherent and complex behaviour.