The active visual system comprises the visual cortices, cerebral attention networks, and oculomotor system. While fascinating in its own right, it is also an important model for sensorimotor networks in general. A prominent approach to studying this system is active inference—which assumes the brain makes use of an internal (generative) model to predict proprioceptive and visual input. This approach treats action as ensuring sensations conform to predictions (i.e., by moving the eyes) and posits that visual percepts are the consequence of updating predictions to conform to sensations. Under active inference, the challenge is to identify the form of the generative model that makes these predictions—and thus directs behaviour. In this paper, we provide an overview of the generative models that the brain must employ to engage in active vision. This means specifying the processes that explain retinal cell activity and proprioceptive information from oculomotor muscle fibres. In addition to the mechanics of the eyes and retina, these processes include our choices about where to move our eyes. These decisions rest upon beliefs about salient locations, or the potential for information gain and belief-updating. A key theme of this paper is the relationship between ‘looking’ and ‘seeing’ under the brain’s implicit generative model of the visual world.

中文翻译：

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主动视觉生成模型


主动视觉系统包括视觉皮层、大脑注意力网络和动眼神经系统。虽然它本身很有趣，但它也是一般感觉运动网络的重要模型。研究该系统的一个重要方法是主动推理，它假设大脑利用内部（生成）模型来预测本体感受和视觉输入。这种方法将动作视为确保感觉符合预测（即通过移动眼睛），并假设视觉感知是更新预测以符合感觉的结果。在主动推理下，面临的挑战是确定做出这些预测并从而指导行为的生成模型的形式。在本文中，我们概述了大脑必须采用的生成模型来参与主动视觉。这意味着要明确解释视网膜细胞活动和动眼肌纤维的本体感觉信息的过程。除了眼睛和视网膜的机制之外，这些过程还包括我们对眼睛移动位置的选择。这些决定取决于对显着位置的信念，或信息获取和信念更新的潜力。本文的一个关键主题是大脑视觉世界的隐性生成模型下“看”和“看”之间的关系。