When knowing the activity is not enough to predict gaze.

It is reasonable to assume that where people look in the world is largely determined by what they are doing. The reasoning is that the activity determines where it is useful to look at each moment in time. Assuming that it is vital to accurately judge the positions of the steps when navigating a staircase, it is surprising that people differ a lot in the extent to which they look at the steps.

Running together influences where you look.

To read this article, you have to constantly direct your gaze at the words on the page. If you go for a run instead, your gaze will be less constrained, so many factors could influence where you look. We show that you are likely to spend less time looking at the path just in front of you when running alone than when running with someone else, presumably because the presence of the other runner makes foot placement more critical.

Methods matter: Exploring how expectations influence common actions.

Behavior in controlled laboratory studies is not always representative of what people do in daily life. This has prompted a recent shift toward conducting studies in natural settings. We wondered whether expectations raised by how the task is presented should also be considered.

Eye Tracking to Assess the Functional Consequences of Vision Impairment: A Systematic Review.

Background: Eye tracking is a promising method for objectively assessing functional visual capabilities, but its suitability remains unclear when assessing the vision of people with vision impairment. In particular, accurate eye tracking typically relies on a stable and reliable image of the pupil and cornea, which may be compromised by abnormalities associated with vision impairment (e.g.

Where do people look when walking up and down familiar staircases?

Many activities in daily life do not impose strict requirements on gaze. We investigated gaze when walking up and down staircases within one's own house. We anticipated that using a variety of staircases in different environments and not informing participants that stair climbing was the focus of investigation might provide a description of gaze behavior that is closer to that used in our daily life than doing so under circumstances in which the focus is explicitly and exclusively directed at the stairs.

Vision recovery with perceptual learning and non-invasive brain stimulation: Experimental set-ups and recent results, a review of the literature.

Background: Vision is the sense which we rely on the most to interact with the environment and its integrity is fundamental for the quality of our life. However, around the globe, more than 1 billion people are affected by debilitating vision deficits. Therefore, finding a way to treat (or mitigate) them successfully is necessary.

Evidence of weight-based representations of gravitational motion.

A hypothesis gaining increasing popularity is that laypeople's representations of physical phenomena might be driven by internalized physical laws. In three experiments, we tested if such hypothesis holds true for the representation of gravitational motion. Participants were presented with realistic, real-scale virtual spheres falling vertically downward from about 2 m high.

Binding Mechanisms in Visual Perception and Their Link With Neural Oscillations: A Review of Evidence From tACS.

Neurophysiological studies in humans employing magneto- (MEG) and electro- (EEG) encephalography increasingly suggest that oscillatory rhythmic activity of the brain may be a core mechanism for binding sensory information across space, time, and object features to generate a unified perceptual representation. To distinguish whether oscillatory activity is causally related to binding processes or whether, on the contrary, it is a mere epiphenomenon, one possibility is to employ neuromodulatory techniques such as transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS). tACS has seen a rising interest due to its ability to modulate brain oscillations in a frequency-dependent manner.

The Effect of Alpha tACS on the Temporal Resolution of Visual Perception.

We experience the world around us as a smooth and continuous flow. However, there is growing evidence that the stream of sensory inputs is not elaborated in an analog way but is instead organized in discrete or quasi-discrete temporal processing windows. These discrete windows are suggested to depend on rhythmic neural activity in the alpha (and theta) frequency bands, which in turn reflect changes in neural activity within, and coupling between, cortical areas.

Parietal tACS at beta frequency improves vision in a crowding regime.

Visual crowding is the inability to discriminate objects when presented with nearby flankers and sets a fundamental limit for conscious perception. Beta oscillations in the parietal cortex were found to be associated to crowding, with higher beta amplitude related to better crowding resilience. An open question is whether beta activity directly and selectively modulates crowding.