Yeshurun Yaffa
Department of Psychology, University of Haifa, Haifa 31905, Israel.
Vision Res. 2004 Jun;44(12):1375-87. doi: 10.1016/j.visres.2003.12.016.
The effects of transient spatial attention on temporal resolution were recently studied and compared with attentional effects on spatial resolution. It was found that in contrast to the attentional enhancement of spatial resolution, transient attention impairs temporal resolution. To account for these findings a novel attentional mechanism was suggested. This attentional mechanism facilitates parvocellular neurons at the attended location, which in turn inhibit the activity of magnocellular neurons at the same location [Yeshurun & Levy, Psychol. Sci. 14 (3) (2003a) 225]. The goal of the present study was to replicate the attentional decrement in temporal resolution (Experiment 1), and perform direct tests of this 'parvo facilitation-magno inhibition' hypothesis. The employment of isoluminant stimuli (Experiments 2a and 2b) or a red background (Experiment 3) ensured that the parvo system was the main system mediating performance. Consequently, any parvo-magno inhibitory processes elicited by the attentional mechanism should only have a minor effect on performance. As predicted, these manipulations either significantly attenuated or completely eliminated the attentional decrement in temporal resolution. These findings provide direct support to the hypothesis that attention favors parvocellular over magnocellular neurons.
最近研究了瞬态空间注意对时间分辨率的影响，并将其与注意对空间分辨率的影响进行了比较。研究发现，与空间分辨率的注意增强相反，瞬态注意会损害时间分辨率。为了解释这些发现，提出了一种新的注意机制。这种注意机制促进了被注意位置的小细胞神经元，进而抑制了同一位置的大细胞神经元的活动[Yeshurun & Levy，《心理科学》14(3)(2003a)225]。本研究的目的是复制时间分辨率的注意衰减(实验1)，并对这种“小细胞促进-大细胞抑制”假说进行直接测试。使用等亮度刺激(实验2a和2b)或红色背景(实验3)确保小细胞系统是介导表现的主要系统。因此，注意机制引发的任何小细胞-大细胞抑制过程对表现应该只有轻微影响。正如预测的那样，这些操作要么显著减弱，要么完全消除了时间分辨率的注意衰减。这些发现为注意有利于小细胞神经元而非大细胞神经元的假说提供了直接支持。
