Systematic Psychophysical Investigation of Visual Learning
Brown University
Summary
The purpose of this study is to investigate how our performance changes after our perceptual system is trained in a certain way ("perceptual learning"). In addition, investigators are interested in identifying and characterizing relationships between such changes and neuroimaging signals recorded from the human brain.
Description
The long-term goal of the proposed project is to elucidate the underlying mechanisms of visual perceptual learning (VPL) for artificial and natural stimuli, which will be instrumental in developing rehabilitation programs aimed at enhancing damaged or deteriorating vision. The specificity of VPL to the feature and location of the trained visual stimulus is a fundamental characteristic of VPL. To investigate the specificity, one effective way is to use an artificial stimulus such as a Gabor patch as the trained stimulus, as it has been widely used to investigate basic visual processing. Simulta…
Eligibility
- Age range
- 18–60 years
- Sex
- All
- Healthy volunteers
- No
Inclusion Criteria: * Ages 18 - 60, * Normal or corrected-to-normal vision Exclusion Criteria: * Eye disorders (cataracts, age related macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy, glaucoma) * Drug use (psychoactive drugs, neuroleptic medications, prescription medications that might affect cognitive and motor performance) * Sleep disorders (sleep apnea, insomnia) * Magnetically or mechanically activated implants (such as cardiac pacemakers) * clips on blood vessels in the brain * intrauterine devices * dentures * pregnancy
Interventions
- BehavioralVisual Training
Participants are asked to detect or discriminate visual stimuli.
Location
- Brown UniversityProvidence, Rhode Island