Premotor visual perception in the fovea and foveola

Human vision is sharpest in the central 5.5 degrees of the visual field (the fovea) and becomes increasingly blurry towards the periphery. In everyday situations, we frequently execute large-scale eye movements called saccades to inspect objects of interest with high-acuity foveal vision. Despite its crucial importance for human perception, foveal vision is surprisingly understudied, particularly in the actively moving observer. Perhaps most detrimental to its study is the simple assumption that foveal vision is saturated and uninfluenced by ongoing motor processes; much like the lens of a microscope, visual perception in the center of gaze is presumed to reflect the ground truth of our environment. Nonetheless, I have previously demonstrated that right before a saccadic eye movement, defining features of the eye movement target (such as its orientation content) are predictively enhanced in foveal vision, resulting in substantial modulations of visual perception in the area of highest acuity. ActiveFovea builds on these findings by combining several cutting-edge methodologies, namely human psychophysics, high-precision Dual-Purkinje-eyetracking, primate electrophysiology and eye-head-tracking in a 360° display environment, under a common aim: transforming our understanding of foveal vision from a passive recipient of high-acuity input to a dynamic and predictive component of active perception. In four work packages, and with the involvement of leading experts in the field, ActiveFovea will investigate the spatiotemporal and featural properties of premotor foveal perception in different species and across different body movement types. Ultimately, we hope to establish foveal vision as a research area well worth investigating and aim to provide a seminal knowledge base that will guide future studies for years to come.