Mechanisms of Perceptual Learning Transfer - PROJECT SUMMARY (See instructions): Dr. Rosedahl's long-term career goal is to understand how vision operates in tasks that involve the interaction between multiple visual processes such as category learning, visual perceptual learning, and visual attention. This knowledge could be used to design better training paradigms for visual tasks and increase the efficiency of visual rehabilitation training. In this project, Dr. Rosedahl will examine how attention can induce visual perceptual learning transfer. Visual perceptual learning is long-term improvement in visual tasks like telling the difference between the angle of two lines or detecting the presence of stripes. Visual perceptual learning is one of the most promising methods to improve vision in individuals with visual impairment. Unfortunately, research has found that visual perceptual learning is very specific to the part of the visual field trained in the task. This specificity greatly limits the use of visual perceptual learning in training paradigms for visual rehabilitation and motivates the goal of this work: to understand the mechanisms by which visual perceptual learning can transfer to untrained visual field locations. This work focuses on understanding the mechanism of an experimental paradigm that causes visual perceptual learning to transfer across visual field locations: double-training. In this paradigm, training on an irrelevant task at a new visual field location causes previous learning to transfer to the new location. To understand the mechanism of this transfer, Dr. Rosedahl will build a unified model of visual processing, visual perceptual learning, feature-based attention, and spatial attention (Aim 1). Dr. Rosedahl will use this model to interpret the results of four experiments to determine if the combination of feature-based attention and spatial attention causes transfer in double-training (Aim 2). The experiments will measure performance improvement, neural activation using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, and changes in neurotransmitter concentrations using Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy. Overall, the work proposed here will establish a novel unified model of visual processing, visual perceptual learning, feature-based attention, and spatial attention and provide insight into the mechanisms of VPL transfer, knowledge that is currently lacking. The model will be a valuable resource for the broader scientific community to study visual learning in real-world scenarios. Additionally, the knowledge gained here could yield novel insights into optimizing visual perceptual learning training paradigms, providing critical
