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Scienze formative, psicologiche e della comunicazione

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Sensory races between motor control brain areas for coordinating how to react to the outside world

Responsabile: dott. Antimo Buonocore
Fonte di finanziamento: DFG - Deutsche Forschungs gemeinschaft
Data inizio: 01/2022
Data fine: 12/2025

Interacting with the surrounding environment necessitates a delicate balance between pursuing internal goals and remaining responsive to external events. Since the 1980s, the primary focus in cognitive neuroscience has been to study how the brain selects appropriate behaviors in response to external stimuli. However, regardless of how well experimental events are controlled, the initial sensory stimuli inevitably arrive asynchronously with the brain's ongoing internal state. This asynchrony creates a 'race condition' between processing new external information and completing internal plans. This project examines this race condition in the context of the visual modality and eye movements. It operates on the premise that before any orienting eye movement response to an external stimulus can occur, an interruption of ongoing internal processes must take place. The project aims to investigate the neurophysiological basis of this early and automatic interruption process triggered by exogenous events. The primary hypothesis is that neurons on the periphery of motor control (e.g. omnipause neurons), endowed with early visual sensitivity, may facilitate the coordination needed to decide whether to orient to an external stimulus or complete an already planned movement. The concept of interruption explored in this project will elucidate a range of neurophysiological phenomena, not only in oculomotor control circuitry but also in cognitive and perceptual processes. This could provide a deeper understanding of some of the classic findings in the attention literature, as well as insights into decision-making processes underlying overt orienting.

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