Perception in the dark: a window to domain general mechanisms of perception

• Applicant: Dr. Barbara Händel
• Subject Area: Human Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 458691526

Eye movements, brain oscillations and perceptual fluctuations, all share the same temporal structure and scale. With the research described in this proposal, we want to explore the idea that rhythmic perception serves as a domain general principle of exploration that is manifest within as well as outside visual cognition. To that end, we plan to investigate the temporal structure of perception, eye movements and neural activity in the tactile as well as auditory domain. In order to control for the influence of vision we will compare tactile and auditory exploration in conditions of light as well as darkness. In addition, we will investigate these processes in congenitally blind individuals. In the first part of the project, we plan to compare rhythmic sampling in the auditory and tactile domain between sighted and congenitally blind and establish oculomotor and neurophysiological hallmarks of rhythmic non-visual sampling. In a second part, we want to inquire if a link between eye movements, oscillatory brain activity and non-visual sensory processing is preserved in congenitally blind. Testing congenitally blind gives us an ideal testbed for the proposed domain-general principle of perception in neural systems with no visual experience. It could generalize rhythmic exploration processes (observable in brain oscillations, eye movements and perceptual fluctuations), though originally observed in vision, for non-visual sensory processing.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Israel
• International Co-Applicant: Dr. Ayelet Landau, Ph.D.