Does Visual Spatial Awareness Require the Visual Awareness of Space?

Many philosophers have held that it is not possible to experience a spatial object, property, or relation except against the background of an intact awareness of a space that is somehow ‘absolute’. This paper challenges that claim, by analyzing in detail the case of a brain-damaged subject whose visual experiences seem to have violated this condition: spatial objects and properties were present in his visual experience, but space itself was not. I go on to suggest that phenomenological argumentation can give us a kind of evidence about the nature of the mind even if this evidence is not absolutely incorrigible

A Dissociation of Attention and Awareness in Phase-sensitive but Not Phase-insensitive Visual Channels

The elements most vivid in our conscious awareness are the ones to which we direct our attention. Scientific study confirms the impression of a close bond between selective attention and visual awareness, yet the nature of this association remains elusive. Using visual afterimages as an index, we investigate neural processing of stimuli as they enter awareness and as they become the object of attention. We find evidence of response enhancement accompanying both attention and awareness, both in the phase-sensitive neural channels characteristic of early processing stages and in the phase-insensitive channels typical of higher cortical areas. The effects of attention and awareness on phase-insensitive responses are positively correlated, but in the same experiments, we observe no correlation between the effects on phase-sensitive responses. This indicates independent signatures of attention and awareness in early visual areas yet a convergence of their effects at more advanced processing stages

How we see

The visual world is imaged on the retinas of our eyes. However, "seeing"' is not a result of neural functions within the eyes but rather a result of what the brain does with those images. Our visual perceptions are produced by parts of the cerebral cortex dedicated to vision. Although our visual awareness appears unitary, different parts of the cortex analyze color, shape, motion, and depth information. There are also special mechanisms for visual attention, spatial awareness, and the control of actions under visual guidance. Often lesions from stroke or other neurological diseases will impair one of these subsystems, leading to unusual deficits such as the inability to recognize faces, the loss of awareness of half of visual space, or the inability to see motion or color

Multi-Sensor Context-Awareness in Mobile Devices and Smart Artefacts

The use of context in mobile devices is receiving increasing attention in mobile and ubiquitous computing research. In this article we consider how to augment mobile devices with awareness of their environment and situation as context. Most work to date has been based on integration of generic context sensors, in particular for location and visual context. We propose a different approach based on integration of multiple diverse sensors for awareness of situational context that can not be inferred from location, and targeted at mobile device platforms that typically do not permit processing of visual context. We have investigated multi-sensor context-awareness in a series of projects, and report experience from development of a number of device prototypes. These include development of an awareness module for augmentation of a mobile phone, of the Mediacup exemplifying context-enabled everyday artifacts, and of the Smart-Its platform for aware mobile devices. The prototypes have been explored in various applications to validate the multi-sensor approach to awareness, and to develop new perspectives of how embedded context-awareness can be applied in mobile and ubiquitous computing

Competition and selection during visual processing of natural scenes and objects

When a visual scene, containing many discrete objects, is presented to our retinae, only a subset of these objects will be explicitly represented in visual awareness. The number of objects accessing short-term visual memory might be even smaller. Finally, it is not known to what extent “ignored” objects (those that do not enter visual awareness) will be processed –or recognized. By combining free recall, forced-choice recognition and visual priming paradigms for the same natural visual scenes and subjects, we were able to estimate these numbers, and provide insights as to the fate of objects that are not explicitly recognized in a single fixation. When presented for 250 ms with a scene containing 10 distinct objects, human observers can remember up to 4 objects with full confidence, and between 2 and 3 more when forced to guess. Importantly, the objects that the subjects consistently failed to report elicited a significant negative priming effect when presented in a subsequent task, suggesting that their identity was represented in high-level cortical areas of the visual system, before the corresponding neural activity was suppressed during attentional selection. These results shed light on neural mechanisms of attentional competition, and representational capacity at different levels of the human visual system

Measuring away an attentional confound?

A recent fMRI study by Webb et al. (Cortical networks involved in visual awareness independent of visual attention, Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2016;113:13923–28) proposes a new method for finding the neural correlates of awareness by matching atten- tion across awareness conditions. The experimental design, however, seems at odds with known features of attention. We highlight logical and methodological points that are critical when trying to disentangle attention and awareness

Situational Awareness Support to Enhance Teamwork in Collaborative Environments

Modern collaborative environments often provide an overwhelming amount of visual information on multiple displays. The multitude of personal and shared interaction devices leads to lack of awareness of team members on ongoing activities, and awareness of who is in control of shared artefacts. This research addresses the situational awareness (SA) support of multidisciplinary teams in co-located collaborative environments. This work aims at getting insights into design and evaluation of large displays systems that afford SA and effective teamwork

SeeReader: An (Almost) Eyes-Free Mobile Rich Document Viewer

Reading documents on mobile devices is challenging. Not only are screens small and difficult to read, but also navigating an environment using limited visual attention can be difficult and potentially dangerous. Reading content aloud using text-to-speech (TTS) processing can mitigate these problems, but only for content that does not include rich visual information. In this paper, we introduce a new technique, SeeReader, that combines TTS with automatic content recognition and document presentation control that allows users to listen to documents while also being notified of important visual content. Together, these services allow users to read rich documents on mobile devices while maintaining awareness of their visual environment

Increasing IPE Awareness through Social Media and Leveraging Visual Content

Background: Social networking is the most popular online activity and increasingly where students, health professionals, and patients get information[i]. In a 2015 student survey at an urban health sciences university, social media was the second most preferred method of communication. Furthermore, content with images gets 94% more total views[ii] and can say more about a program than a long description. This shift is a challenge in healthcare where patient confidentiality is paramount. Description of Intervention or Program: We created a Twitter account in August 2015. Our goals were to: Promote awareness of internal and external IPE programs Drive student attendance at IPE programs Encourage continuous interprofessional learning and innovation Recognizing the effectiveness of visual content, we subscribed to an online service for creating infographics and other images. Results: We have amassed 186 followers, with a daily average of 316 impressions (number of times users saw a tweet on Twitter). We share ideas within the IPE community and support internal partners. In 2016, our tweets with images have had 52% higher engagement from followers; tweets with videos had 72% higher engagement. Conclusion: Social media spreads awareness of IPE initiatives and helps to connect with the internal and external IPE communities. Visual content increases engagement. Social media platforms with more student traffic, such as Facebook and Instagram, could help increase followership among students in particular. Relevance to interprofessional education or practice: As IPE is an increasing priority for educators and providers, it is important these individuals know about the IPE resources and campus network. A well-managed social media account can increase such awareness. 2-3 measureable learning objectives relevant to conference goals: Explain the importance of leveraging social media to increase awareness of IPE among students, faculty, and clinicians Leverage visual content to maximize engagement with audience and support marketing needs of IPE faculty and staff [i] Richter, F. (2013). Social Networking Is the No. 1 Online Activity in the U.S. https://www.statista.com/chart/1238/digital-media-use-in-the-us/ [ii] Bullas, J., & Mawhinney, J. (2016). 37 Visual Content Marketing Statistics You Should Know in 2016. http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/visual-content-marketing-strategy#sm.00001kbk5bfyecddivn7nnbuchdn

Time-locked perceptual fading induced by visual transients

After prolonged fixation, a stationary object placed in the peripheral visual field fades and disappears from our visual awareness, especially at low luminance contrast (the Troxler effect). Here, we report that similar fading can be triggered by visual transients, such as additional visual stimuli flashed near the object, apparent motion, or a brief removal of the object itself (blinking). The fading occurs even without prolonged adaptation and is time-locked to the presentation of the visual transients. Experiments show that the effect of a flashed object decreased monotonically as a function of the distance from the target object. Consistent with this result, when apparent motion, consisting of a sequence of flashes was presented between stationary disks, these target disks perceptually disappeared as if erased by the moving object. Blinking the target disk, instead of flashing an additional visual object, turned out to be sufficient to induce the fading. The effect of blinking peaked around a blink duration of 80 msec. Our findings reveal a unique mechanism that controls the visibility of visual objects in a spatially selective and time-locked manner in response to transient visual inputs. Possible mechanisms underlying this phenomenon will be discussed