Neurophysiology of Active Perception

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===== Do we slow down when we don't know what to do? ===== One of the things that distinguishes humans from lower animals is their ability to select task-relevant information in cluttered sensory environments. This ability goes beyond merely selecting the information to which one has to respond; it also involves the ability to deal with the conflict that emerges when multiple stimuli elicit incompatible responses. Initially, this situation of response conflict may result from insufficient selection between the different stimuli but, following the detection of response conflict, it may also be resolved by increasing the selectivity (i.e., enhancing task-relevant information and blocking distractors). Therefore, it is no surprise that one of the central questions in cognitive neuroscience is how the brain allows for goal-directed behaviour by the selective gating of sensory information, depending on task-relevance. Conflict monitoring is a set of cognitive processes that allows us to deal with conflict between different stimuli in our environment, but also between internal factors such as desire and fear. In this project, we will focus on the former type, conflict between different stimuli that are associated with different behavioural responses. A well accepted behavioural index of conflict monitoring is the so-called //conflict effect//: the reaction time (RT) difference between stimulus configurations in which the components elicit different responses (incongruent stimuli) and stimulus configurations in which the components elicit the same response (congruent stimuli). The typical observation is that the RT to incongruent stimuli is larger than the one to the congruent stimuli. This has been observed in several tasks, such as the [[flanker]], the stroop and the Simon task, each of which involves a different stimulus configuration. {{:stimselconflmonstimulus.jpg?400 |}}