Basic Science: Visual Attention in Healthy ParticipantsNCT06852521
Probing the Role of Feature Dimension Maps in Visual Cognition: Manipulations of Relevant Locations on Salience Processing? (Expt 3.1 Pilot)
A study testing Stimulus Properties: Target Location, Stimulus Properties: Distractor Presence and Stimulus properties: Cue Validity in people with Basic Science: Visual Attention in Healthy Participants and Attention, run by University of California, Santa Barbara at 1 site in United States.
Trial summary
How do we know what's important to look at in the environment? Sometimes, we need to look at objects because they are 'salient' (for example, bright flashing lights of a police car, or the stripes of a venomous animal), while other times, we need to ignore irrelevant salient locations and focus only on locations we… Read more about this study
- Who is it for?
- Ages 18 to 55 yearsHealthy volunteers can take part
- Conditions the study is for
- Basic Science: Visual Attention in Healthy Participants, Attention
- What is being tested?
- Stimulus Properties: Target Location, Stimulus Properties: Distractor Presence and Stimulus properties: Cue Validity
- Could I receive a placebo?
- No, everyone receives an active treatment
- How many people
- 240 participants
- Where
- 1 siteUnited States
- Study dates
- 6 Feb 2025to Feb 2027
- Phase
- Interventional
- Are there results?
- Not yet: the study is under way
Key requirements
Who can take part, as listed by the sponsor. Only the study team can confirm whether you are eligible, so take this list to your doctor.
- Ages 18 to 55 years
- All sexes
- Healthy volunteers accepted
- Adult
Who may be able to join
- between 18 and 55 years of age
- normal or corrected-to-normal vision
Who cannot join
- N/A
Trial locations and contacts
1 site in 1 country. Contact the study team or a site near you to ask about taking part.
United States1 site
University of California, Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, California, 93117
About this study
Official title: Probing the Role of Feature Dimension Maps in Visual Cognition: Expt 3.1 (Pilot)
How do we know what's important to look at in the environment? Sometimes, we need to look at objects because they are 'salient' (for example, bright flashing lights of a police car, or the stripes of a venomous animal), while other times, we need to ignore irrelevant salient locations and focus only on locations we know to be 'relevant'. These behaviors are often explained by the use of 'priority maps' which index the relative importance of different locations in the visual environment based on both their salience and relevance. In this research, we aim to understand how these factors interact when determining what's important to look at. Specifically, we are evaluating the extent to which the visual system considers locations that are known to be irrelevant when considering the salience of objects. We're testing the hypothesis that the visual system always computes maps of salient locations within 'feature maps', but that activity from these maps is not read out to guide behavior for task-irrelevant locations. We'll have people look at displays containing colored shapes and/or moving dots and report aspects of the visual stimulus (e.g., orientation of a line within a particular stimulus). We'll measure response times across conditions in which we manipulate the presence/absence of salient distracting stimuli and provide various kinds of cues about the potential relevance of different locations on the screen.
The rationale is that by measuring changes in visual search behavior (and thus inferring computations performed on brain representations), we will determine how these aspects of simplified visual environments impact the brain's representation of important object locations. This will support future studies using brain imaging techniques aimed at identifying the neural mechanisms supporting the extraction of salient and relevant locations from visual scenes, which can inform future diagnosis/treatment of disorders which can impact our ability to perform visual search (e.g., schizophrenia, Alzheimer's disease).
- Being tested
- Stimulus Properties: Target Location, Stimulus Properties: Distractor Presence, Stimulus properties: Cue Validity
What participants receive
What participants receive. In a randomised study each person is assigned to one group by chance.
Stimulus Properties: Target LocationOther
The location of the target item in the display will be varied across trials (appear left, right, up, or down)
Stimulus Properties: Distractor PresenceOther
A proportion of all trials will contain a task-irrelevant, singleton distractor defined in a non-target dimension (e.g., color target and motion distractor)
Stimulus properties: Cue ValidityOther
Varied across trials, the validity of the cue will be determined by the match or mismatch between direction of the visual cue (an arrowhead around the fixation pointing to the right, left, up, or down) and actual target location
| Study group | Role | What they receive |
|---|---|---|
| Manipulations of Relevant Locations (Expt 3.1 Pilot) | Experimental | Participants will complete a visual search task in which they will covertly search for a unique target item based on a specific feature dimension indicated at the start of the experiment (unique color, unique motion direction, unique shape) in an 8 item array. At the beginning of each trial, participants will be visually cued (e.g., an arrowhead around fixation) to the side of the display the target item will appear (left, right, up, down). A proportion of all trials will contain a task-irrelevant, singleton distractor defined in a non-target dimension (e.g., color target and motion distractor) Receives: Other: Stimulus Properties: Target Location; Other: Stimulus Properties: Distractor Presence; Other: Stimulus properties: Cue Validity |
What is being measured
The primary outcome is the main question the study is designed to answer.
Behavioral response (button press)
Participants will be required to report the orientation of a line (horizontal or vertical) within the target via a speeded button press. The specific values of color, shape, and motion will vary randomly from trial to trial. Participants will complete separate sessions with each session directing participants to search for a different target feature dimension.
Measured: Through study completion, an average of two weeks
Gaze position
The investigators will use the measured gaze position in (x,y) coordinates to verify stable fixation throughout the experiment. The data will be used to establish gaze fixation and/or track where participants look as they perform the visual search task. Trials with poor fixation performance may be excluded from further analyses.
Measured: Through study completion, an average of two weeks
Timeline
From the start of the study to its completion; the mark is today. Estimated dates are the sponsor’s plan.
- First posted28 Feb 2025
- Study start6 Feb 2025
- Primary completionFeb 2027 (estimated)
- Study completionFeb 2027 (estimated)
Resources
- Official record on ClinicalTrials.govThe registry entry this page is built from, with its full change history.
- Publications (17)Papers the sponsor has linked to this study.
- Other trials for Basic Science: Visual Attention in Healthy ParticipantsStudies of the same condition, open and under way.
- What the trial phases meanHow a treatment moves from first tests in people to approval.
More details
For doctors and researchers: how the study is designed, who runs it, and its registry IDs.
Study design
- Study type
- Interventional
- Phase
- Phase N/A
- Primary purpose
- Basic science
- Allocation
- Not applicable
- Intervention model
- Single group
- Model description
- This is a basic science study in which all participants will participate in all task conditions within each experiment (repeated-measures design).
- Masking
- None (open label)
- Enrolment
- 240 participants (estimated)
Sponsor and investigators
- Lead sponsor
- University of California, Santa Barbara
- Sponsor type
- University, hospital or other
- Collaborators
- National Eye Institute (NEI)
- Responsible party
- Sponsor
- Investigators
- Tommy C Sprague, Principal investigator, University of California, Santa Barbara
IDs, dates and publications
- ClinicalTrials.gov ID
- NCT06852521
- Sponsor's protocol ID
- 10-25-0048: 3.1 (Pilot)
- Other IDs
- R01EY035300
- Status last verified
- Apr 2026
- First submitted
- 24 Feb 2025
- Last updated
- 22 Apr 2026
- Results posted
- No
- Data monitoring committee
- No
- FDA-regulated drug
- No
- FDA-regulated device
- No
- Individual data sharing
- Yes: Raw and fully anonymized behavioral data will be shared with researchers immediately upon publication
Publications
Mackey WE, Winawer J, Curtis CE. Visual field map clusters in human frontoparietal cortex. Elife. 2017 Jun 19;6:e22974. doi: 10.7554/eLife.22974.
PubMed 28628004Hallenbeck GE, Sprague TC, Rahmati M, Sreenivasan KK, Curtis CE. Working memory representations in visual cortex mediate distraction effects. Nat Commun. 2021 Aug 5;12(1):4714. doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-24973-1.
PubMed 34354071Sprague TC, Itthipuripat S, Vo VA, Serences JT. Dissociable signatures of visual salience and behavioral relevance across attentional priority maps in human cortex. J Neurophysiol. 2018 Jun 1;119(6):2153-2165. doi: 10.1152/jn.00059.2018. Epub 2018 Feb 28.
PubMed 29488841Sprague TC, Adam KCS, Foster JJ, Rahmati M, Sutterer DW, Vo VA. Inverted Encoding Models Assay Population-Level Stimulus Representations, Not Single-Unit Neural Tuning. eNeuro. 2018 Jun 5;5(3):ENEURO.0098-18.2018. doi: 10.1523/ENEURO.0098-18.2018. eCollection 2018 May-Jun. No abstract available.
PubMed 29876523Sprague TC, Boynton GM, Serences JT. The Importance of Considering Model Choices When Interpreting Results in Computational Neuroimaging. eNeuro. 2019 Dec 20;6(6):ENEURO.0196-19.2019. doi: 10.1523/ENEURO.0196-19.2019. Print 2019 Nov/Dec.
PubMed 31772033Laumann TO, Gordon EM, Adeyemo B, Snyder AZ, Joo SJ, Chen MY, Gilmore AW, McDermott KB, Nelson SM, Dosenbach NU, Schlaggar BL, Mumford JA, Poldrack RA, Petersen SE. Functional System and Areal Organization of a Highly Sampled Individual Human Brain. Neuron. 2015 Aug 5;87(3):657-70. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2015.06.037. Epub 2015 Jul 23.
PubMed 26212711Allen EJ, St-Yves G, Wu Y, Breedlove JL, Prince JS, Dowdle LT, Nau M, Caron B, Pestilli F, Charest I, Hutchinson JB, Naselaris T, Kay K. A massive 7T fMRI dataset to bridge cognitive neuroscience and artificial intelligence. Nat Neurosci. 2022 Jan;25(1):116-126. doi: 10.1038/s41593-021-00962-x. Epub 2021 Dec 16.
PubMed 34916659Fedorenko E. The early origins and the growing popularity of the individualsubject analytic approach in human neuroscience. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences. 2021; 40:105-112.
Naselaris T, Allen E, Kay K. Extensive sampling for complete models of individual brains. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences. 2021; 40:45-51.
Poldrack RA. Diving into the deep end: a personal reflection on the MyConnectome study. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences. 2021; 40:1-4.
Pritschet L, Taylor CM, Santander T, Jacobs EG. Applying dense-sampling methods to reveal dynamic endocrine modulation of the nervous system. Curr Opin Behav Sci. 2021 Aug;40:72-78. doi: 10.1016/j.cobeha.2021.01.012. Epub 2021 Feb 25.
PubMed 35369044Gratton C, Nelson SM, Gordon EM. Brain-behavior correlations: Two paths toward reliability. Neuron. 2022 May 4;110(9):1446-1449. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2022.04.018.
PubMed 35512638Smith PL, Little DR. Small is beautiful: In defense of the small-N design. Psychon Bull Rev. 2018 Dec;25(6):2083-2101. doi: 10.3758/s13423-018-1451-8.
PubMed 29557067Sprague TC, Serences JT. Attention modulates spatial priority maps in the human occipital, parietal and frontal cortices. Nat Neurosci. 2013 Dec;16(12):1879-87. doi: 10.1038/nn.3574. Epub 2013 Nov 10.
PubMed 24212672Itthipuripat S, Vo VA, Sprague TC, Serences JT. Value-driven attentional capture enhances distractor representations in early visual cortex. PLoS Biol. 2019 Aug 9;17(8):e3000186. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3000186. eCollection 2019 Aug.
PubMed 31398186
Study at a glance
From the registry record, last updated by the sponsor on 22 Apr 2026. Recruitment status is as the sponsor reported it: confirm with the study team.
- Official title
- Probing the Role of Feature Dimension Maps in Visual Cognition: Expt 3.1 (Pilot)
- ClinicalTrials.gov ID
- NCT06852521
- Acronym / sponsor ID
- 10-25-0048: 3.1 (Pilot)
- Study type
- Interventional
- Recruitment status
- Enrolling by invitation
- Enrolment
- 240 participants (estimated)
- Lead sponsor
- University of California, Santa BarbaraUniversity, hospital or other
- Collaborators
- National Eye Institute (NEI)
- Study start
- 6 Feb 2025 (actual)
- Primary completion
- Feb 2027 (estimated)
- Study completion
- Feb 2027 (estimated)
- First posted
- 28 Feb 2025 (actual)
- Results
- Not posted in the source record
Clinical summary
The research question as the sponsor registered it. This describes what the study plans to test, not what it found.
How do we know what's important to look at in the environment? Sometimes, we need to look at objects because they are 'salient' (for example, bright flashing lights of a police car, or the stripes of a venomous animal), while other times, we need to ignore irrelevant salient locations and focus only on locations we know to be 'relevant'. These behaviors are often explained by the use of 'priority maps' which index the relative importance of different locations in the visual environment based on both their salience and relevance. In this research, we aim to understand how these factors interact when determining what's important to look at. Specifically, we are evaluating the extent to which the visual system considers locations that are known to be irrelevant when considering the salience of objects. We're testing the hypothesis that the visual system always computes maps of salient locations within 'feature maps', but that activity from these maps is not read out to guide behavior for task-irrelevant locations. We'll have people look at displays containing colored shapes and/or moving dots and report aspects of the visual stimulus (e.g., orientation of a line within a particular stimulus). We'll measure response times across conditions in which we manipulate the presence/absence of salient distracting stimuli and provide various kinds of cues about the potential relevance of different locations on the screen.
The rationale is that by measuring changes in visual search behavior (and thus inferring computations performed on brain representations), we will determine how these aspects of simplified visual environments impact the brain's representation of important object locations. This will support future studies using brain imaging techniques aimed at identifying the neural mechanisms supporting the extraction of salient and relevant locations from visual scenes, which can inform future diagnosis/treatment of disorders which can impact our ability to perform visual search (e.g., schizophrenia, Alzheimer's disease).
Study design
- Primary purpose
- Basic science
- Allocation
- Not applicable
- Intervention model
- Single group
- Masking
- None (open label)
- Number of arms
- 1
- Model description
- This is a basic science study in which all participants will participate in all task conditions within each experiment (repeated-measures design).
| Arm | Type | Receives |
|---|---|---|
| Manipulations of Relevant Locations (Expt 3.1 Pilot) | Experimental | Other: Stimulus Properties: Target Location, Other: Stimulus Properties: Distractor Presence, Other: Stimulus properties: Cue ValidityParticipants will complete a visual search task in which they will covertly search for a unique target item based on a specific feature dimension indicated at the start of the experiment (unique color, unique motion direction, unique shape) in an 8 item array. At the beginning of each trial, participants will be visually cued (e.g., an arrowhead around fixation) to the side of the display the target item will appear (left, right, up, down). A proportion of all trials will contain a task-irrelevant, singleton distractor defined in a non-target dimension (e.g., color target and motion distractor) |
Who may qualify
- Ages
- 18 to 55 years
- Sex
- All
- Healthy volunteers
- Accepted
- Age groups
- Adult
Key inclusion criteria (2 listed)
- between 18 and 55 years of age
- normal or corrected-to-normal vision
Key exclusion criteria (1 listed)
- N/A
Eligibility is decided by the study team after screening; this overview does not establish that a patient qualifies. Full inclusion and exclusion criteria.
Interventions
| Intervention | Type | Arms |
|---|---|---|
| Stimulus Properties: Target LocationThe location of the target item in the display will be varied across trials (appear left, right, up, or down) | Other | Manipulations of Relevant Locations (Expt 3.1 Pilot) |
| Stimulus Properties: Distractor PresenceA proportion of all trials will contain a task-irrelevant, singleton distractor defined in a non-target dimension (e.g., color target and motion distractor) | Other | Manipulations of Relevant Locations (Expt 3.1 Pilot) |
| Stimulus properties: Cue ValidityVaried across trials, the validity of the cue will be determined by the match or mismatch between direction of the visual cue (an arrowhead around the fixation pointing to the right, left, up, or down) and actual target location | Other | Manipulations of Relevant Locations (Expt 3.1 Pilot) |
Primary outcome
Behavioral response (button press)
Time frame: Through study completion, an average of two weeks
Participants will be required to report the orientation of a line (horizontal or vertical) within the target via a speeded button press. The specific values of color, shape, and motion will vary randomly from trial to trial. Participants will complete separate sessions with each session directing participants to search for a different target feature dimension.
Gaze position
Time frame: Through study completion, an average of two weeks
The investigators will use the measured gaze position in (x,y) coordinates to verify stable fixation throughout the experiment. The data will be used to establish gaze fixation and/or track where participants look as they perform the visual search task. Trials with poor fixation performance may be excluded from further analyses.
Results and safety
This study is still under way. Results are not available in the source record yet.
Research links
- Official record on ClinicalTrials.govLast updated by the sponsor 22 Apr 2026.
- Background: PubMed 28628004Mackey WE, Winawer J, Curtis CE. Visual field map clusters in human frontoparietal cortex. Elife. 2017 Jun 19;6:e22974. doi: 10.7554/eLife.22974.
- Background: PubMed 34354071Hallenbeck GE, Sprague TC, Rahmati M, Sreenivasan KK, Curtis CE. Working memory representations in visual cortex mediate distraction effects. Nat Commun. 2021 Aug 5;12(1):4714. doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-24973-1.
- Background: PubMed 29488841Sprague TC, Itthipuripat S, Vo VA, Serences JT. Dissociable signatures of visual salience and behavioral relevance across attentional priority maps in human cortex. J Neurophysiol. 2018 Jun 1;119(6):2153-2165. doi: 10.1152/jn.00059.2018. Epub 2018 Feb 28.
- Background: PubMed 29876523Sprague TC, Adam KCS, Foster JJ, Rahmati M, Sutterer DW, Vo VA. Inverted Encoding Models Assay Population-Level Stimulus Representations, Not Single-Unit Neural Tuning. eNeuro. 2018 Jun 5;5(3):ENEURO.0098-18.2018. doi: 10.1523/ENEURO.0098-18.2018. eCollection 2018 May-Jun. No abstract available.
- Background: PubMed 31772033Sprague TC, Boynton GM, Serences JT. The Importance of Considering Model Choices When Interpreting Results in Computational Neuroimaging. eNeuro. 2019 Dec 20;6(6):ENEURO.0196-19.2019. doi: 10.1523/ENEURO.0196-19.2019. Print 2019 Nov/Dec.
- Background: PubMed 26212711Laumann TO, Gordon EM, Adeyemo B, Snyder AZ, Joo SJ, Chen MY, Gilmore AW, McDermott KB, Nelson SM, Dosenbach NU, Schlaggar BL, Mumford JA, Poldrack RA, Petersen SE. Functional System and Areal Organization of a Highly Sampled Individual Human Brain. Neuron. 2015 Aug 5;87(3):657-70. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2015.06.037. Epub 2015 Jul 23.
- Background: PubMed 34916659Allen EJ, St-Yves G, Wu Y, Breedlove JL, Prince JS, Dowdle LT, Nau M, Caron B, Pestilli F, Charest I, Hutchinson JB, Naselaris T, Kay K. A massive 7T fMRI dataset to bridge cognitive neuroscience and artificial intelligence. Nat Neurosci. 2022 Jan;25(1):116-126. doi: 10.1038/s41593-021-00962-x. Epub 2021 Dec 16.
- BackgroundFedorenko E. The early origins and the growing popularity of the individualsubject analytic approach in human neuroscience. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences. 2021; 40:105-112.
- BackgroundNaselaris T, Allen E, Kay K. Extensive sampling for complete models of individual brains. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences. 2021; 40:45-51.
- BackgroundPoldrack RA. Diving into the deep end: a personal reflection on the MyConnectome study. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences. 2021; 40:1-4.
- Background: PubMed 35369044Pritschet L, Taylor CM, Santander T, Jacobs EG. Applying dense-sampling methods to reveal dynamic endocrine modulation of the nervous system. Curr Opin Behav Sci. 2021 Aug;40:72-78. doi: 10.1016/j.cobeha.2021.01.012. Epub 2021 Feb 25.
- Background: PubMed 35512638Gratton C, Nelson SM, Gordon EM. Brain-behavior correlations: Two paths toward reliability. Neuron. 2022 May 4;110(9):1446-1449. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2022.04.018.
- Individual participant dataSharing planned: Yes. Raw and fully anonymized behavioral data will be shared with researchers immediately upon publication
Related trials for Basic Science: Visual Attention in Healthy Participants
Enrolling by invitation
Probing the Role of Feature Dimension Maps in Visual Cognition: Impact of Task Demands and Spatial Attention (Expt 2.2)
Basic Science: Visual Attention in Healthy Participants, Basic Science: Neural Representations of Location
Referral and contact
AzTrials does not enrol participants or take referrals. Contact the study team or a site listed below; they decide who can take part.
Tommy C Sprague principal investigator
University of California, Santa Barbara
1 site in 1 country: see every site and its status.
Questions about this trial
What is this clinical trial studying?
A study testing Stimulus Properties: Target Location, Stimulus Properties: Distractor Presence and Stimulus properties: Cue Validity in people with Basic Science: Visual Attention in Healthy Participants and Attention, run by University of California, Santa Barbara at 1 site in United States.
The full registered description is in the About this study section and the official record.
Who may be eligible to take part?
The sponsor lists 2 inclusion and 1 exclusion criteria. Eligibility is decided by the study team after screening, so read the full criteria and contact a listed site.
Is this clinical trial currently recruiting?
The record says: enrolling by invitation, as of the sponsor's last update on 22 Apr 2026. Status can change between updates, so confirm with the study contact before making plans.
Where is the study taking place?
The record lists 1 site in United States. Whether a site is taking part right now should be confirmed with that site. See every site.
What are the possible benefits and risks?
They depend on the study and the treatment, and no study can promise a benefit. The study team explains the known risks during informed consent, before anyone joins; the record itself does not list them.
Are results available for this study?
This study is still under way. Results are not available in the source record yet.
How can a doctor refer a patient or contact the research team?
The record lists no contact. The official record names the sponsor, who can be asked directly. AzTrials does not enrol participants or take referrals.
What does the primary outcome measure?
Behavioral response (button press) (time frame: Through study completion, an average of two weeks). The study lists 2 primary outcomes in all. It is what the study was designed to measure, not a finding.
Where can I read the original study information?
On the ClinicalTrials.gov record for NCT06852521, which also lists 17 linked publications.
Does a listing mean the treatment is approved or proven to work?
No. A listing means the study is registered. It does not show that the treatment is safe, works, or is approved by a regulator.
How often is this information updated?
AzTrials copies changed records from ClinicalTrials.gov every night and reloads the whole registry every week. The sponsor last updated this record on 22 Apr 2026.