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New Research Shows How Our Individual Gaze Patterns Shape Distinct Neural Representations of Visual Content
In a groundbreaking study, researchers from Justus Liebig University Giessen (JLU) have uncovered how individual eye movements can lead to distinct versions of the same film in viewers’ brains. The findings, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reveal that each person experiences a unique mental representation of a movie based on their gaze patterns.
The research team, led by Petra Borovska and Prof. Ben de Haas, Ph.D., from JLU’s Experimental Psychology department, used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and machine learning to analyze brain activity while 19 participants watched the same film. The study compared brain activity during two viewing conditions: natural viewing, where participants followed their usual eye movement patterns, and passive viewing, where they stared at a fixed point on the screen.
The results demonstrated that natural eye movements resulted in stronger activation in the brain’s visual centers. However, this activation was more individualized, making it challenging to align one person’s brain activity with another’s. This variability is attributed to the unique way each person’s eyes move and focus during viewing.
“Traditionally, we’ve thought of eye movements as mere responses to visual stimuli,” says Prof. de Haas. “Our research shows that eye movements are as distinctive as personality traits. Some individuals are more attentive to faces, while others focus on text or background details.”
Petra Borovska adds, “We speculated that these individual viewing habits might create a unique ‘world’ in each person’s mind. Our findings confirm this, and we were able to predict differences in brain activity patterns based on eye movement similarities measured in a separate experiment.”
The study’s implications extend beyond cinema, suggesting that eye movements influence how we understand scenes and perform daily tasks. “It’s fascinating that while eye movements enhance neural activity, they also make brain representations less comparable between individuals,” de Haas notes. “It’s like each brain creates its own director’s cut of the movie.”
The researchers are now investigating how eye movement patterns evolve over a person’s lifetime and their impact on perception and cognition.
Next time you’re at the movies, you might wonder if the person sitting next to you is watching the same film in their mind. According to this study, the answer could very well be “no.”
For more details, see Petra Borovska et al, “Individual gaze shapes diverging neural representations,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2024). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2405602121.
