Biology subjects

Koselevs, A.

Publications and source records attributed to Koselevs, A..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2026

Disentangling visual and motor contributions to continuous psychophysics

Continuous psychophysics measures visual function by asking observers to track a randomly moving target. Because continuous responses provide more information than traditional discrete judgements, a few minutes of tracking can estimate visual sensitivity, making the approach attractive for testing children and patients. Tracking performance is often summarized by cross-correlating the target and cursor velocities: the resulting cross-correlogram peak, lag and width index how strongly, quickly and sharply the observer responds to the target. Tracking, however, requires both seeing the target and moving the cursor towards it, so poor tracking may reflect impaired vision, impaired motor control, or both. Here, we test whether visual and motor contributions to tracking performance can be told apart. Participants tracked a target with a computer mouse while wearing glasses that simulate two levels of visual impairment, using either their dominant or their non-dominant hand. We find that both manipulations alter the cross-correlogram metrics, lowering the peak correlation and delaying and broadening the response, but in different proportions. Visual impairment mainly delays and broadens the response, and does so in proportion to each participant's loss of visual acuity. The non-dominant hand mainly lowers the peak correlation. Two signatures of motor control explain this difference: with the non-dominant hand, participants pause more often and for longer, and move more noisily between pauses, whereas visual impairment alters neither. Together, response lag, time paused and movement noise reveal whether a change in tracking is visual or motor in almost every participant. Our findings demonstrate that, given a baseline measurement, the same tracking data that measure vision can also reveal whether a change in performance reflects a change in what an individual sees or in how they move.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2025

From Perception to Appraisal: Hierarchical Brain Responses to Natural and Built Features in Urban Environments

Exposure to urban rather than natural environments has been linked to elevated stress and diminished well-being, prompting interest in the underlying mechanisms and influences of specific urban elements. This study investigated how semantic and lower-level visual characteristics of urban scenes influence subjective experience and underlying neural processes. A total of 63 adults viewed street-level photographs depicting urban environments with varying proportions of vegetation, buildings, vehicles, and sky visibility while electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded. Subjective ratings indicated that urban scenes with more greenery compared to built elements were consistently perceived as more positive. In terms of lower-level image features, images with higher non-straight edge density also led to scenes being perceived as more positive. In contrast, a more visible sky area and a higher mean metric depth led to more negative scene appraisal. On a neural level, urban scenes with higher greenery/built ratios enhanced visual evoked P1 amplitudes, while higher straight-edge density led to more pronounced N1 amplitudes. Further analysis showed that later P3 and LPP components were associated with subjective ratings on higher-level evaluative but not basic affective dimensions. These results partially replicate previous studies, suggesting that urban greenery exerts an effect on subjective well-being and influences early visual processing. Moving forward, Neuro-Urbanism research should employ more diversified stimuli and leverage immersive or in situ paradigms to refine our understanding of the relationship between greenery in urban environments and well-being to inform evidence-based urban design strategies. HighlightsO_LIHigher proportions of greenery in urban environments lead to more positive responses across a variety of subjective rating scales. C_LIO_LIMore urban greenery elicited more pronounced P1 amplitudes, replicating previous findings. C_LIO_LIEarliest visual processing (P1) responds to natural elements of the environment, before processing of visual features characteristic of artificial elements (N1). C_LIO_LILater ERP components (P3, LPP) are associated with subjective scene appraisal of higher level and aesthetic evaluation, pointing to a separation between perceptual and evaluative processes. C_LI

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2025

Attentional cueing effects are reversed during locomotion

Everyday human cognition and behaviour evolved in dynamic and ever-changing environments, but static paradigms still dominate experimental research despite concerns about generalisability of the results. In the case of attention, traditional stationary studies show that pre-orienting attention with spatial cues leads to faster, more accurate responses. However, how movement and environmental features shape such attentional processes in everyday behaviour remains unknown. Here we show that active movement through curved corridors reverses the typical spatial attention effect, with faster response times and higher accuracy for stimuli incongruent to implicit spatial cues provided by the movement direction, contradicting previous findings from static settings. We found that early (N1) and late (P3) attention-related electrophysiological responses were modulated by environmental features and motor demands. The posterior N1-component, reflecting visuo-spatial attention, showed decreasing amplitudes as turning angles and motor-control demands increased for congruent stimuli appearing on the side of the turning direction. Similarly, the P3-complex varied with motor and visual processing demands for congruent stimuli, showing decreased amplitudes as motor-control demands increased. We propose that congruent stimuli, displayed against a dynamically changing visual context, increase pulvino-cortical processing load and slowing early visual processing that affect behavioural responses. Incongruent stimuli, however, are displayed against a predictable context allowing faster target processing. These findings challenge attentional mechanisms assumed consistency across static and dynamic settings, revealing instead their dependence on behavioural and environmental context. We advocate for naturalistic paradigms, arguing that moving beyond static experiments could reshape core views on cognition and behaviour.

neuroscience↗