Annual Review of Vision Science最新文献

Retinal prostheses aim at restoring sight to patients blinded by atrophy of photoreceptors using electrical stimulation of the inner retinal neurons. Bipolar cells can be targeted using subretinal implants, and their responses are then relayed to the central visual pathways via the retinal neural network, preserving many features of natural signal processing. Epiretinal implants stimulate the output retinal layer-ganglion cells-and encode visual information directly in spiking patterns.Several companies and academic groups have demonstrated that electrical stimulation of the degenerate retina can elicit visual percepts. However, most failed to consistently and safely achieve an acceptable level of performance. Recent clinical trials demonstrated that subretinal photovoltaic arrays in patients visually impaired by age-related macular degeneration can provide letter acuity matching their 100 μm pixel pitch, corresponding to 20/420 acuity. Electronic zoom enabled patients to read smaller fonts. This review describes the concepts, technologies, and clinical outcomes of current systems and provides an outlook into future developments.

Our brains encode many features of the sensory world into memories: We can sing along with songs we have heard before, interpret spoken and written language composed of words we have learned, and recognize faces and objects. Where are these memories stored? Each area of cerebral cortex has a huge number of local recurrent excitatory-excitatory synapses, as many as 500 million per cubic millimeter. Here I outline evidence for the theory that cortical recurrent connectivity in sensory cortex is a substrate for sensory memories. Evidence suggests that the local recurrent network encodes the structure of natural sensory input and that it does so via active filtering, transforming network inputs to boost or select those associated with natural sensation. Active filtering is a form of predictive processing-in which the cortical recurrent network selectively amplifies some input patterns and attenuates others-and a form of memory.

Driving is a complex multisensory experience that requires the integration of various sensory inputs to maintain effective situational awareness, with vision and visual attention being paramount for safe driving. However, multitasking significantly degrades a driver's situational awareness and causes them to overlook or misjudge important aspects of their environment, such as pedestrians, road signs, or other vehicles. It also impairs a driver's ability to visually scan for hazards and process vital information, reducing their capacity to notice and respond to changes on the roadway. Multitasking can also induce inattentional blindness, causing drivers to miss important information directly in their line of sight. Beyond diminished visual attention, multitasking also slows reaction times to detected events, increasing the likelihood and severity of crashes. This article discusses the central role that visual attention plays in a driver's situational awareness, examines common methods for assessing visual attention while driving, and presents an updated review of the SPIDER (scanning, predicting, identification, decision-making, and executing a response) model of driver awareness with a focus on visual distraction.

The contributions of surface reflectance and incident illumination are entangled in the light reflected to the eye. Historically, the extent to which the perception of one determines the other has long been debated, particularly in empirical studies of surface lightness and color constancy. Despite enormous progress in physical measurements of the spatial, spectral, and temporal properties of natural illumination, and in the ability to generate and control in real time artificial light of an almost infinite variety of spectra, the questions of whether and how people perceive the illumination as a distinct entity with its own color, and the interdependence of perceived surface color on perceived illumination, remain open. Given the rise in novel lighting interventions that modulate illumination spectra in order to improve health, well-being, productivity, and culture, it has become increasingly important to understand the two-way interaction between the visual and nonvisual sensing of illumination.

Crowding is ubiquitous: When objects are surrounded by other elements, their perception may be impaired depending on factors such as the proximity of the surrounding elements and the grouping of elements and targets. Crowding research aims to identify these factors, for instance, which elements interfere with one another and how close they need to be to cause crowding. Traditionally, crowding was thought to occur only within narrow temporal and spatial limits around the target. Recent studies, however, reveal that crowding may result from both low- and high-level processes, such as perceptual grouping and timing, as well as the arrangement of complex visual stimuli. This review highlights these new insights, suggesting that overall organization, as well as both feedforward and feedback processes, plays a role. Crowding emerges as a highly complex and dynamic phenomenon, underscoring the need for a more integrated approach to fully capture its intricacies, which may carry broader implications not only for crowding but also for vision science as a whole.

Humans and other animals move their eyes, heads, and bodies to interact with their surroundings. While essential for survival, these movements produce additional sensory signals that complicate visual scene analysis. However, these self-generated visual signals offer valuable information about self-motion and the three-dimensional structure of the environment. In this review, we examine recent advances in understanding depth and motion perception during self-motion, along with the underlying neural mechanisms. We also propose a comprehensive framework that integrates various visual phenomena, including optic flow parsing, depth from motion parallax, and coordinate transformation. The studies reviewed here begin to provide a more complete picture of how the visual system carries out a set of complex computations to jointly infer object motion, self-motion, and depth.

Visual perception of self-motion is essential for navigation and environmental interaction. This review examines the mechanisms by which we perceive self-motion, highlighting recent progress and significant findings. It first evaluates optic flow and its critical role in the perception of self-motion, then considers nonflow visual cues that contribute to this process. Key aspects of self-motion perception are discussed, including the perception of instantaneous direction (i.e., heading) and future trajectory (i.e., path) of self-motion. It then addresses two closely linked topics: the perception of independent object motion during self-motion and the perception of heading with independent object motion. While these processes occur concurrently, research indicates that they involve separate perceptual mechanisms. In light of recent neurophysiological findings, potential neural mechanisms underlying these two processes are proposed. Finally, it discusses how studies often conflate unreal optic flow with real optic flow, raising questions for future research to better understand how the brain processes optic flow for the perception of self-motion.

Müller cells and retinal nerve fiber layer astrocytes are the major astroglia of the mammalian retina. They have numerous important functions in adulthood for maintaining neuronal homeostasis as well as in developing retina, where they facilitate key events in the assembly of the retinal tissue. Recent years have seen substantial progress in understanding how these astroglial cells develop and how their development shapes the cells around them. We review the mechanisms underlying the formation, maturation, and spatial patterning of Müller glia and retinal astrocytes, with an emphasis on how they acquire their functional properties. We focus on developmental events that have a major impact on overall retinal integrity, such as the formation of neuro-glial junctions at the outer limiting membrane and the patterning of retinal astrocytes into a template that guides angiogenesis. Finally, we discuss examples of retinal diseases that originate in developmental defects affecting Müller cells or retinal astrocytes. These include certain classes of inherited retinal degenerations, as well as retinopathy of prematurity.

People have to deal with a lot of uncertainty in their daily actions. This uncertainty arises from the limited resolution of their sensory processing and motor control, as well as from unpredictable changes in the environment. How do people ensure that their actions are successful when faced with all this uncertainty? We argue that they do so by constantly reconsidering their plan in accordance with their instantaneous evaluation of the circumstances. Doing so allows them to quickly respond to any changes in the environment. The response can be a small adjustment to an ongoing movement, but also diverting the movement if it suddenly becomes evident that moving toward a completely different target is more suitable for some reason. We present a simple kinematic model based on the idea that it is always beneficial to move smoothly to illustrate how continuously reconsidering movement plans can explain many findings in the literature.

Cerebral visual impairment (CVI) is a brain-based visual disorder associated with early injury and maldevelopment of visual processing pathways and areas. The clinical profile of visual dysfunctions observed in CVI is broad and complex. In this review, we discuss how visuospatial processing deficits represent a core feature of this condition, focusing on evidence from behavioral studies investigating complex motion processing and visual search abilities. Results from functional and structural neuroimaging studies have also provided important insight into putative neurophysiological mechanisms associated with these functional visual impairments. We propose that higher-order visual processing dysfunctions in CVI result from an impaired interplay between bottom-up (stimulus-driven) and top-down (goal-driven) processing mechanisms that leads to characteristic challenges in interpreting and interacting with the surrounding visual environment.