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"MILNER, A. David"
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Sight unseen : an exploration of conscious and unconscious vision
Vision, more than any other sense, dominates our mental life. Our conscious visual experience of the world is so rich and detailed that we can hardly distinguish it from the real thing. But as Goodale and Milner make clear in their prize-winning book, Sight Unseen, our visual experience of the world is not all there is to vision. Some of the most important things that vision does for us never reach our consciousness at all. In this updated and extended new edition, Goodale and Milner explore one of the most extraordinary neurological cases of recent years--one that profoundly changed scientific views on the visual brain. It is the story of Dee Fletcher--a young woman who became blind to shape and form as a result of brain damage. Dee was left unable to recognize objects or even tell one simple geometric shape from another. As events unfolded, however, Goodale and Milner found that Dee wasn't in fact blind -- she just didn't know that she could see. They showed, for example, that Dee could reach out and grasp objects with amazing dexterity, despite being unable to perceive their shape, size, or orientation. Taking us on a journey into the unconscious brain, the two scientists who made this incredible discovery tell the amazing story of their work, and the surprising conclusion they were forced to reach. Written to be accessible to students and popular science readers, this book is a fascinating illustration of the power of the 'unconscious' mind.
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The Magic Grasp: Motor Expertise in Deception
Most of us are poor at faking actions. Kinematic studies have shown that when pretending to pick up imagined objects (pantomimed actions), we move and shape our hands quite differently from when grasping real ones. These differences between real and pantomimed actions have been linked to separate brain pathways specialized for different kinds of visuomotor guidance. Yet professional magicians regularly use pantomimed actions to deceive audiences.
In this study, we tested whether, despite their skill, magicians might still show kinematic differences between grasping actions made toward real versus imagined objects. We found that their pantomimed actions in fact closely resembled real grasps when the object was visible (but displaced) (Experiment 1), but failed to do so when the object was absent (Experiment 2).
We suggest that although the occipito-parietal visuomotor system in the dorsal stream is designed to guide goal-directed actions, prolonged practice may enable it to calibrate actions based on visual inputs displaced from the action.
Journal Article
Stereoscopic Vision in the Absence of the Lateral Occipital Cortex
Both dorsal and ventral cortical visual streams contain neurons sensitive to binocular disparities, but the two streams may underlie different aspects of stereoscopic vision. Here we investigate stereopsis in the neurological patient D.F., whose ventral stream, specifically lateral occipital cortex, has been damaged bilaterally, causing profound visual form agnosia. Despite her severe damage to cortical visual areas, we report that DF's stereo vision is strikingly unimpaired. She is better than many control observers at using binocular disparity to judge whether an isolated object appears near or far, and to resolve ambiguous structure-from-motion. DF is, however, poor at using relative disparity between features at different locations across the visual field. This may stem from a difficulty in identifying the surface boundaries where relative disparity is available. We suggest that the ventral processing stream may play a critical role in enabling healthy observers to extract fine depth information from relative disparities within one surface or between surfaces located in different parts of the visual field.
Journal Article
Automatic avoidance of obstacles is a dorsal stream function: evidence from optic ataxia
When we reach out to pick something up, our arm is directed to the target by visuomotor networks in the cortical dorsal stream. However, our reach trajectories are influenced also by nontarget objects, which might be construed as potential obstacles. We tested two patients with bilateral dorsal-stream (parietal lesions, both of whom were impaired at pointing to visual stimuli (optic ataxia). We asked them to reach between two cylinders, which varied in location from trial to trial. We found that the patients' reaches remained invariant with changes in obstacle location. In a control task when they were asked to point midway between the two objects, however, their responses shifted in an orderly fashion. We conclude that the dorsal stream provides the visual guidance we automatically build into our movements to avoid potential obstacles, as well as that required to ensure arrival at the target.
Journal Article
Two illusions of perceived orientation: one fools all of the people some of the time; the other fools all of the people all of the time
In a series of three separate experiments, we studied two different orientation illusions, in both of which vertical lines appear tilted as a result of being set against a tilted background pattern. The 'simultaneous tilt illusion' (STI), in which a target grating is viewed within an abutting tilted grating surround, is thought to originate early in the cortical processing of visual contours. In contrast, the 'rod-and-frame' illusion (RFI), which is induced by a distant tilted frame, is thought to originate much later in the perceptual processing system. In the first two experiments we found that orientation-guided action was virtually impervious to the RFI, whereas both perceptual experience and action were equally influenced by the STI. In the third experiment, in which the two illusions were pitted one against the other, an opposite pattern of effects emerged, such that visuomotor performance was now deceived by the illusion much more than was perceptual experience. This pattern of association and dissociation in the effects of visual illusions on perception versus action can best be explained within a two-visual-systems model of cortical processing.
Journal Article
Ocular scanning and perceptual size distortion in hemispatial neglect: effects of prism adaptation and sequential stimulus presentation
When asked to compare two lateralized shapes for horizontal size, neglect patients often indicate the left stimulus to be smaller. Gainotti and Tiacci (1971) hypothesized that this phenomenon might be related to a rightward bias in the patients' gaze. This study aimed to assess the relation between this size underestimation and oculomotor asymmetries. Eye movements were recorded while three neglect patients judged the horizontal extent of two rectangles. Two experimental manipulations were performed to increase the likelihood of symmetrical scanning of the stimulus display. The first manipulation entailed a sequential, rather than simultaneous presentation of the two rectangles. The second required adaptation to rightward displacing prisms, which is known to reduce many manifestations of neglect. All patients consistently underestimated the left rectangle, but the pattern of verbal responses and eye movements suggested different underlying causes. These include a distortion of space perception without ocular asymmetry, a failure to view the full leftward extent of the left stimulus, and a high-level response bias. Sequential presentation of the rectangles and prism adaptation reduced ocular asymmetries without affecting size underestimation. Overall, the results suggest that leftward size underestimation in neglect can arise for a number of different reasons. Incomplete leftward scanning may perhaps be sufficient to induce perceptual size distortion, but it is not a necessary prerequisite.
Journal Article
Monocular and binocular distance cues: insights from visual form agnosia I (of III)
The human nervous system constructs a Euclidean representation of near (personal) space by combining multiple sources of information (cues). We investigated the cues used for the representation of personal space in a patient with visual form agnosia (DF). Our results indicated that DF relies predominantly on binocular vergence information when determining the distance of a target despite the presence of other (retinal) cues. Notably, DF was able to construct an Euclidean representation of personal space from vergence alone. This finding supports previous assertions that vergence provides the nervous system with veridical information for the construction of personal space. The results from the current study, together with those of others, suggest that: (i) the ventral stream is responsible for extracting depth and distance information from \"monocular\" retinal cues (i.e. from shading, texture, perspective) and (ii) the dorsal stream has access to binocular information (from horizontal image disparities and vergence). These results also indicate that DF was not able to use size information to gauge target distance, suggesting that intact temporal cortex is necessary for \"learned size\" to influence distance processing. Our findings further suggest that in neurologically intact humans, object information extracted in the ventral pathway is combined with the products of dorsal stream processing for guiding prehension. Finally, we studied the \"size-distance paradox\" in visual form agnosia in order to explore the cognitive use of size information. The results of this experiment were consistent with a previous suggestion that the paradox is a cognitive phenomenon.
Journal Article
Optic ataxia as a model to investigate the role of the posterior parietal cortex in visually guided action: evidence from studies of patient M.H
Optic ataxia is a neuropsychological disorder that affects the ability to interact with objects presented in the visual modality following either unilateral or bilateral lesions of the posterior parietal cortex (PPC). Patients with optic ataxia fail to reach accurately for objects, particularly when they are presented in peripheral vision. The present review will focus on a series of experiments performed on patient M.H. Following a lesion restricted largely to the left PPC, he developed mis-reaching behavior when using his contralesional right arm for movements directed toward the contralesional (right) visual half-field. Given the clear-cut specificity of this patient's deficit, whereby reaching actions are essentially spared when executed toward his ipsilateral space or when using his left arm, M.H. provides a valuable \"experiment of nature\" for investigating the role of the PPC in performing different visually guided actions. In order to address this, we used kinematic measurement techniques to investigate M.H.'s reaching and grasping behavior in various tasks. Our experiments support the idea that optic ataxia is highly function-specific: it affects a specific sub-category of visually guided actions (reaching but not grasping), regardless of their specific end goal (both reaching toward an object and reaching to avoid an obstacle); and finally, is independent of the limb used to perform the action (whether the arm or the leg). Critically, these results are congruent with recent functional MRI experiments in neurologically intact subjects which suggest that the PPC is organized in a function-specific, rather than effector-specific, manner with different sub-portions of its mantle devoted to guiding actions according to their specific end-goal (reaching, grasping, or looking), rather than according to the effector used to perform them (leg, arm, hand, or eyes).
Journal Article
Intact automatic avoidance of obstacles in patients with visual form agnosia
In everyday life our reaching behaviour has to be guided not only by the location and properties of the target object, but also by the presence of potential obstacles in the workspace. Recent evidence from neglect and optic ataxia patients has suggested that this automatic obstacle avoidance is mediated by the dorsal, rather than the ventral, stream of visual processing. We tested this idea in two studies involving patients with visual form agnosia resulting from bilateral ventral-stream damage. In the first study, we asked patient DF to reach out and pick up a target object in the presence of obstacles placed at varying distances to the left or right of the target. We found that both DF and controls shifted their trajectories away from the potential obstacles and adjusted their grip aperture in such a way as to minimize risk of collision. In a second study, we asked DF and a second patient, SB, to either reach between, or to bisect the space between, two cylinders presented at varying locations. We found that both patients adjusted their reach trajectories to account for shifts in cylinder location in the reaching task, despite showing significantly worse performance than control subjects when asked to make a bisection judgement. Taken together, these data indicate that automatic obstacle avoidance behaviour is spared in our patients with visual form agnosia. We attribute their ability to the functional intactness of the dorsal stream of visual processing, and argue that the ventral stream plays no important role in automatic obstacle avoidance.
Journal Article
Vertical gaze angle as a distance cue for programming reaching: insights from visual form agnosia II (of III)
It has been shown that a patient with visual form agnosia (DF) relies predominantly on vergence information when gauging target distance in an open-loop pointing task. This finding suggested that the programming of prehension might be severely disrupted if DF viewed target objects through ophthalmic prisms. An initial experiment showed that this prediction was not upheld; DF was able to programme reasonably accurate movements to objects located on a tabletop despite large changes in vergence angle. A second experiment, however, showed that placing the target objects at eye height whilst manipulating vergence angle caused gross disruption to prehension, with DF mis-programming the reach component in a predictable manner. Notably, the evidence for DF's reliance on vergence distance information was obtained in a task where the targets were viewed at eye height. These experiments indicate that DF uses vertical gaze angle to gauge target distance in normal prehension and suggest that this extra-retinal cue may be a useful source of distance information for the human nervous system, especially where pictorial cues are impoverished.
Journal Article