SC Connecticut News

Yale researchers have uncovered how visual clutter affects information processing in the brain. Their study, published in the journal Neuron, reveals that clutter alters the flow of information within the brain, with its precise location in the field of vision influencing this process. This research sheds light on perception and offers insights into the functioning of the visual cortex.

Assistant Professor Anirvan Nandy from Yale School of Medicine explains, "Prior research has shown that visual clutter has an effect on the target of your perception, and to different degrees depending on where that clutter is with respect to where you’re currently looking." He adds that "visual crowding" makes it difficult to identify objects at the periphery of our vision.

To investigate further, researchers trained macaque monkeys to focus on a screen's center while stimuli appeared inside and outside their receptive fields. The team recorded neural activity in the primary visual cortex during these tasks. They found that while clutter's location did not change neuron communication order, it impacted how efficiently information flowed.

Monika Jadi, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine and co-senior author of the study, noted that "visual clutter in one location would drive information in a particular layer of the primary visual cortex to a lesser extent than clutter in another location."

The study also identified previously unknown properties of the visual cortex. Information moves through several brain areas when recognizing an object, following a specific sequence. Researchers discovered subunits within these regions performing individual computations and selectively relaying information.

Nandy highlights potential future investigations: "When you’re driving...your attention could be focused on a car in the next lane as you try to determine if they’re about to merge." Jadi echoes this interest: "How does attention influence information flow in the cortex? That’s what we want to explore."

Xize Xu and Mitchell Morton contributed as co-first authors for this research.