Nina Hanning

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Verified

Nina verified their affiliation via an institutional email.

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• PhD
• PostDoc Position at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

The presaccadic preview of a peripheral target enhances the efficiency of its postsaccadic processing, termed the extrafoveal preview effect. Peripheral visual performance—and thus the quality of the preview—varies around the visual field, even at isoeccentric locations: It is better along the horizontal than vertical meridian and along the lower t...

Contrast sensitivity (CS), which constrains human vision, decreases from fovea to periphery, from the horizontal to the vertical meridian, and from the lower vertical to the upper vertical meridian. It also depends on spatial frequency (SF), and the contrast sensitivity function (CSF) depicts this relation. To compensate for these visual constraint...

We tested the hypothesis that an algorithmic information processing pattern from robotics, Active InterCONnect (AICON), could serve as a useful representation for exploring human vision. We created AICON-based computational models for two visual illusions: the shape-contingent color aftereffect and silencing by motion. The models reproduced the eff...

With every saccadic eye movement, humans bring new information into their fovea to be processed with high visual acuity. Notably, perception is enhanced already before a relevant item is foveated: During saccade preparation, presaccadic attention shifts to the upcoming fixation location, which can be measured via behavioral correlates such as enhan...

Online methods allow testing of larger, more diverse populations, with much less effort than in-lab testing. However, many psychophysical measurements, including visual crowding, require accurate eye fixation, which is classically achieved by testing only experienced observers who have learned to fixate reliably, or by using a gaze tracker to restr...

Contrast sensitivity, which constrains our vision, decreases from fovea to periphery, from the horizontal to the vertical meridian, and from the lower vertical to the upper vertical meridian. The Contrast Sensitivity Function (CSF) depicts how contrast sensitivity varies with spatial frequency (SF). To overcome these visual constraints, we constant...

Shortly before saccadic eye movements, visual sensitivity at the saccade target is enhanced, at the expense of sensitivity elsewhere. Some behavioral and neural correlates of this presaccadic shift of attention resemble those of covert attention, deployed during fixation. Microstimulation in non-human primates has shown that presaccadic attention m...

Online methods allow testing of larger, more diverse populations, with much less effort than in-lab testing. However, many psychophysical measurements, including visual crowding, require accurate eye fixation, which is classically achieved by testing only experienced observers who have learned to fixate reliably, or by using a gaze tracker to restr...

The pre-saccadic preview of a peripheral target enhances the efficiency of its post-saccadic processing, termed the extrafoveal preview effect. Peripheral visual performance –and thus the quality of the preview– varies around the visual field, even at iso-eccentric locations: it is better along the horizontal than vertical meridian and along the lo...

Covert endogenous (voluntary) attention improves visual performance. Human neuroimaging studies suggest that the putative human homolog of macaque frontal eye fields (FEF+) is critical for this improvement, whereas early visual areas are not. Yet, correlational MRI methods do not manipulate brain function. We investigated whether rFEF+ or V1/V2 pla...

Shortly before each saccadic eye movement, presaccadic attention improves visual sensitivity at the saccade target at the expense of lowered sensitivity at non-target locations. Some behavioral and neural correlates of presaccadic attention and covert attention are similar, which likewise enhances sensitivity but during fixation. This resemblance h...

Visual perception is limited by spatial resolution, the ability to discriminate fine details. Spatial resolution not only declines with eccentricity but also differs for polar angle locations around the visual field, also known as ‘performance fields'. To compensate for poor peripheral resolution, we make rapid eye movements—saccades—to bring perip...

With every saccadic eye movement, humans bring new information into their fovea to be processed with high visual acuity. Notably, perception is enhanced already before a relevant item is foveated: During saccade preparation, presaccadic attention shifts to the upcoming fixation location, which can be measured via behavioral correlates such as enhan...

Visual perception is limited by spatial resolution, the ability to discriminate fine details. Spatial resolution not only declines with eccentricity but also differs for polar angle locations around the visual field, also known as ‘performance fields'. To compensate for poor peripheral resolution, we make rapid eye movements –saccades– to bring per...

Visual perception is limited by spatial resolution, which declines with eccentricity and differs around polar angle locations. To compensate for poor peripheral resolution, we make rapid eye movements, saccades, to bring peripheral objects into high-acuity foveal vision. Already before saccade onset, visual attention shifts to the saccade target lo...

Covert endogenous (voluntary) attention improves visual performance. Human neuroimaging studies suggest that the putative human homolog of macaque FEF (FEF+) is critical for this improvement, whereas early visual areas are not. Yet, MRI methods are correlational, as they do not manipulate brain function. Here we investigated whether rFEF+ or V1/V2...

Psychophysical paradigms measure visual attention via localized test items to which observers must react or whose features have to be discriminated. These items, however, potentially interfere with the intended measurement, as they bias observers’ spatial and temporal attention to their location and presentation time. Furthermore, visual sensitivit...

Already before the onset of a saccadic eye movement, we preferentially process visual information at the upcoming eye fixation. This 'presaccadic shift of attention' is typically assessed via localized test items, which potentially bias the attention measurement. Here we show how presaccadic attention shapes perception from saccade origin to target...

Visual performance has striking polar performance asymmetries: At a fixed eccentricity, it is better along the horizontal than vertical meridian and the lower than upper vertical meridian. These asymmetries are not alleviated by covert exogenous or endogenous attention, but have been studied exclusively during eye fixation. However, a major driver...

Voluntary attentional control is the ability to selectively focus on a subset of visual information in the presence of other competing stimuli–a marker of cognitive control enabling flexible, goal-driven behavior. To test its robustness, we contrasted attentional control with the most common source of attentional orienting in daily life: attention...

Already before the onset of a saccadic eye movement, we preferentially process visual information at the upcoming eye fixation. This 'presaccadic shift of attention' is typically assessed via localized test items, which potentially bias the attention measurement. Here we show how presaccadic attention shapes perception from saccade origin to target...

Human visual performance is not only better at the fovea and decreases with eccentricity, but also has striking radial asymmetries around the visual field: At a fixed eccentricity, it is better along (1) the horizontal than vertical meridian and (2) the lower than upper vertical meridian. These asymmetries, known as performance fields, are pervasiv...

Psychophysical paradigms measure visual attention via localized test items to which observers must react or whose features have to be discriminated. These items, however, potentially interfere with the intended measurement as they bias observers’ spatial and temporal attention to their location and presentation time. Furthermore, visual sensitivity...

Attention is a central neural process that enables selective and efficient processing of visual information. Individuals can attend to specific visual information either overtly, by making an eye movement to an object of interest, or covertly, without moving their eyes. We review behavioral, neuropsychological, neurophysiological, and computational...

Attention shifts that precede goal-directed eye and hand movements are regarded as markers of motor target selection. Whether effectors compete for a single, shared attentional resource during simultaneous eye-hand movements or whether attentional resources can be allocated independently towards multiple target locations is controversially debated....

People can learn to ignore salient distractors that occur frequently at particular locations, making them interfere less with task performance. This effect has been attributed to learnt suppression of the likely distractor locations at a pre-selective stage of attentional-priority computation. However, rather than distractors at frequent (vs. rare)...

Neurophysiological studies have demonstrated that attentional orienting is associated with activity in fronto-parietal brain areas that play a pivotal role in oculomotor control, such as the lateral intraparietal cortex (LIP), the frontal eye fields (FEF), and the superior colliculus (SC) (e.g., [1]). Accordingly, based on the influential premotor...

It has been long debated whether visual attention can shift covertly, decoupled from programming eye movements. Now we know that patients with gaze paralysis show conventional benefits of exogenous (involuntary) attention, confirming that covert attention is not driven by oculomotor programming.

Voluntary attentional control is the ability to selectively focus on a subset of visual information in the presence of other competing stimuli. While it is well established that this capability is a marker of cognitive control that allows for flexible, goal-driven behavior, it is still an open question how robust it is. In this study we contrasted...

Saccadic eye movements are typically preceded by selective shifts of visual attention. Recent evidence, however, suggests that oculomotor selection can occur in the absence of attentional selection when saccades erroneously land in between nearby competing objects (saccade averaging). This study combined a saccade task with a visual discrimination...

Neurophysiological studies demonstrated that attentional orienting is performed by fronto-parietal brain areas which also play an important role in oculomotor control. Accordingly, several studies claimed that exogenous attention can only be allocated to where we can potentially make an eye movement, i.e. within the oculomotor range. We tested this...

People can learn to ignore salient distractors that occur frequently at particular locations. This distractor-location probability-cueing effect has been attributed to learnt suppression of the likely distractor locations at a pre-selective stage of attentional-priority computations. An alternative, post-selective account would be that distractors...

Attention shifts that precede goal-directed eye and hand movements are regarded as markers of motor target selection. Recent studies found parallel allocation of visuospatial attention to saccade and reach targets during simultaneous eye-hand movements, arguing in favor of independent, effector-specific target selection mechanisms. This raises the...

Measuring visual sensitivity has become popular to determine the spatial deployment of visual attention. Critically, the accuracy of the measurement depends on the quality of the stimulus used. We evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of six commonly used stimuli for assessing visual attention. While preparing an eye movement to a cued item, parti...

Quick phases of optokinetic nystagmus are often equated to saccades. Indeed, their trajectories resemble the saccadic ‘main sequence’, and both saccade and quick phase control involve the same brainstem circuitry. However, whether and to what extend higher cortical areas associated with saccade programming (e.g. lateral intraparietal area, frontal...

Both patients with eye movement disorders and healthy participants whose oculomotor range had been experimentally reduced have been reported to show attentional deficits at locations unreachable by their eyes. Whereas previous studies were mainly based on the evaluation of reaction times, we measured visual sensitivity before saccadic eye movements...

Magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) measures the two most common inhibitory and excitatory neurotransmitters, GABA and glutamate, in the human brain. However, the role of MRS-derived GABA and glutamate signals in relation to system-level neural signaling and behavior is not fully understood. In this study, we investigated levels of GABA and gluta...

Discrimination performance has become an important proxy for the analysis of visuospatial attention. In a typical paradigm, test stimuli such as characters or oriented Gabors are briefly presented at various locations in the visual field. One potential problem arising here is that these stimuli themselves constitute visual objects that may structur...

Both eye and hand movements have been shown to selectively interfere with visual working memory. We investigated working memory in the context of simultaneous eye-hand movements to approach the question whether the eye and the hand movement systems independently interact with visual working memory. Participants memorized several locations and perfo...

Both eye and hand movements bind visual attention to their target locations during movement preparation. However, it remains contentious whether eye and hand targets are selected jointly by a single selection system, or individually by independent systems. To unravel the controversy, we investigated the deployment of visual attention - a proxy of m...

Saccades and reaches have been shown to selectively interfere with visual working memory, presumably due to the deployment of spatial attention to their action goals. Given the assumption of independent attentional mechanisms for the selection of eye and hand targets, the question arises whether the two effector systems also separately interact wit...

Both eye and hand movements have been shown to draw visual attention to their goal locations during movement preparation. However, it is still a matter of debate whether a unitary attentional system underlies the selection of both eye and hand targets, or whether they are selected by independent systems. To approach this question we investigated th...

The anti-saccade task, in which participants have to avoid a reflexive response towards a visual stimulus and make a voluntary response away from it instead, is a classic task to investigate flexible control of behavior. However, earlier work has show enhanced visual and neural responses at the visual stimulus and saccade target locations, which is...

Oculomotor selection, spatial task relevance and visual working memory (WM) are described as three processes highly intertwined and sustained by similar cortical structures. However, as task relevant locations always constitute potential saccade targets, no study so far has been able to distinguish between oculomotor selection and spatial task rele...

Although saccade processing, visuospatial attention and visual working-memory (WM) are interdependent aspects of visual cognition, the interactions between all three have rarely been directly investigated. By combining a change detection task with a delayed saccade task, we were able to examine their separate influences on visual WM. Participants f...