Active vision in freely moving marmosets using head-mounted eye tracking

Abstract

Our understanding of how vision functions as primates actively navigate the real-world is remarkably sparse. As most data have been limited to chaired and typically head-restrained animals, the synergistic interactions of different motor actions/plans inherent to active sensing e.g. eyes, head, posture, movement, etc. on visual perception are largely unknown. To address this considerable gap in knowledge, we developed an innovative wireless head-mounted eye tracking system called CEREBRO for small mammals, such as marmoset monkeys. Our system performs Chair-free Eye-Recording using Backpack mounted micROcontrollers. Because eye illumination and environment lighting change continuously in natural contexts, we developed a segmentation artificial neural network to perform robust pupil tracking in these conditions. Leveraging this innovative system to investigate active vision, we demonstrate that although freely-moving marmosets exhibit frequent compensatory eye movements equivalent to other primates, including humans, the predictability of the visual system is enhanced when animals are freely-moving relative to when they are head-fixed. Moreover, despite increases in eye/head-motion during locomotion, gaze stabilization actually improved over periods when the monkeys were stationary. Rather than impair vision, the dynamics of gaze stabilization in freely-moving primates has been optimized over evolution to enable active sensing during natural exploration.