Probing the Role of Feature Dimension Maps in Visual Cognition: Impact of Salience Level (Eye-tracking Follow-up Study)

April 17, 2026 updated by: University of California, Santa Barbara

Probing the Role of Feature Dimension Maps in Visual Cognition: Expt 1.1 (Behavioral)

How does one know what to look at in a scene? Imagine a "Where's Waldo" game - it's challenging to find Waldo because there are many 'salient' locations in the picture, each vying for one's attention. One can only attend to a small location on the picture at a given moment, so to find Waldo, one needs to direct their attention to different locations. One prominent theory about how one accomplishes this claims that important locations are identified based on distinct feature types (for example, motion or color), with locations most unique compared to the background most likely to be attended. An important component of this theory is that individual feature dimensions (again, color or motion) are computed within their own 'feature maps', which are thought to be implemented in specific brain regions. However, whether and how specific brain regions contribute to these feature maps remains unknown.

The goal of this study is to determine how brain regions that respond strongly to different feature types (color and motion) and which encode spatial locations of visual stimuli extract 'feature dimension maps' based on stimulus properties, including feature contrast. The investigators hypothesize that feature-selective brain regions act as neural feature dimension maps, and thus encode representations of salient location(s) based on their preferred feature dimension. The investigators will collect eye-tracking data while participants view visual stimuli made salient based on different combinations of feature dimensions. From the eye-tracking data, the investigators will construct fixation heat maps on the feature dimensions for all levels of salience, allowing them to connect behavioral data to the latter fMRI dataset. Each participant will freely view the stimuli as they appear on the computer display. Across trials, the investigators will manipulate 1) the 'strength' of the salient locations based on how different the salient stimulus is compared to the background, 2) the number of salient locations, and 3) the feature value(s) used to make each location salient. Altogether, these manipulations will help the investigators fully understand these critical salience computations in the healthy human visual system.

Study Overview

Status

Completed

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Actual)

20

Phase

  • Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Locations

  • United States
    • California
      • Santa Barbara, California, United States, 93117
        • University of California, Santa Barbara

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

  • Adult

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  • between 18 and 55 years of age
  • normal or corrected-to-normal vision

Exclusion Criteria:

  • N/A

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

  • Primary Purpose: Basic Science
  • Allocation: N/A
  • Interventional Model: Single Group Assignment
  • Masking: None (Open Label)

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: Manipulations of graded feature salience (Expt 1.1)
Participants will view stimuli made salient based on feature contrast in one feature dimensions (color or motion direction; or checkerboard luminance contrast). The degree to which a location is salient will be manipulated based on the feature contrast across multiple values
Other: Stimulus properties: salience-defining feature
The feature used to define a salient location will be varied across trials (checkerboard contrast; motion direction; color hue)
Other: Stimulus properties: magnitude of salience
The magnitude of the salient location will be varied across trials independently from salience-defining feature (based on feature contrast)

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Gaze Position - Probability of Fixation at Salient Position
Time Frame: Through study completion, an average of one week
For each condition, we compute the probability that participants instructed to free-view the display fixate the salient location on the screen (reported for highest contrast condition)
Through study completion, an average of one week

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

University of California, Santa Barbara

Collaborators

National Eye Institute (NEI)

Investigators

  • Principal Investigator: Tommy Sprague, University of California, Santa Barbara

Publications and helpful links

The person responsible for entering information about the study voluntarily provides these publications. These may be about anything related to the study.

General Publications

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start (Actual)

November 22, 2024

Primary Completion (Actual)

April 2, 2025

Study Completion (Actual)

April 2, 2025

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

February 24, 2025

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

February 24, 2025

First Posted (Actual)

February 28, 2025

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Actual)

May 11, 2026

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

April 17, 2026

Last Verified

April 1, 2026

More Information

Terms related to this study

Other Study ID Numbers

  • 5-24-0700: Expt 1.1 Behavioral
  • R01EY035300 (U.S. NIH Grant/Contract)

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?

YES

IPD Plan Description

Raw eye-tracking data will be shared with researchers immediately upon publication

IPD Sharing Time Frame

Data will be available indefinitely beginning with publication of results

IPD Sharing Access Criteria

Raw behavioral/eyetracking data will be publicly available on the lab's Open Science Framework page (https://osf.io/ufjzl/), and analysis code will be available on GitHub (an online tool for storing and managing code; github.com/SpragueLab)

IPD Sharing Supporting Information Type

  • STUDY_PROTOCOL
  • SAP
  • ICF
  • ANALYTIC_CODE

Drug and device information, study documents

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product

No

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product

No

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

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