Mental tracking of dynamic features.
De Freitas J., Myers N., Nobre A.
A temporarily occluded object is perceived as persisting through occlusion, emerging as the same unitary object. In the real world, an object's features are also often changing as they become occluded. However, it is unknown how the brain continues to keep track of such dynamic, invisible features, binding them to the correct objects. In a first case study of this question, we found that such featural information (dynamic orientation change) was mentally extrapolated forwards in time (E1). This effect scaled with the speed of the object (E2), occurred for both moving and stationary objects (E3), occurred only during free eye movements (E4), and is an effect of mental transformation (E5). These results demonstrate how the brain tracks a dynamic feature through 'gaps' of visual input. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2015.