Integrating neural and ocular attention reorienting signals in virtual reality
Objective. Reorienting is central to how humans direct attention to different stimuli in their
environment. Previous studies typically employ well-controlled paradigms with limited eye and head
movements to study the neural and physiological processes underlying attention reorienting. Here, we
aim to better understand the relationship between gaze and attention reorienting using a
naturalistic virtual reality (VR)-based target detection paradigm. Approach. Subjects were navigated
through a city and instructed to count the number of targets that appeared on the street. Subjects
performed the task in a fixed condition with no head movement and in a free condition where head
movements were allowed. Electroencephalography (EEG), gaze and pupil data were collected. To
investigate how neural and physiological reorienting signals are distributed across different gaze
events, we used hierarchical discriminant component analysis (HDCA) to identify EEG and pupil-based
discr...