Li Zhaoping: Central-peripheral dichotomy (CPD): multisensory orienting and recognition across animal species

Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics & University of Tübingen

Attentional bottlenecks force animals to deeply process only a selected fraction of sensory inputs. This motivates a unifying central-peripheral dichotomy (CPD), which separates multisensory processing into functionally defined central and peripheral senses. Peripheral senses (e.g., human audition and peripheral vision) select a fraction of the sensory inputs by orienting animals’ attention; central senses (e.g., human foveal vision) allow animals to recognize the selected inputs. Originally used to understand human vision, CPD can be applied to multisensory processes across species. I first describe key characteristics of central and peripheral senses, such as the degree of top-down feedback and density of sensory receptors, and then show CPD as a framework to link ecological, behavioral, neurophysiological, and anatomical data and produce falsifiable predictions.

 

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Organized by

Michael Brecht / Margret Franke