Ip Ifan Betina, Bridge Holly, Parker Andrew J
Department of Physiology, Anatomy & Genetics, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom; Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, The Oxford Centre for Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Brain, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom.
Department of Physiology, Anatomy & Genetics, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom.
PLoS One. 2014 Jun 17;9(6):e100074. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0100074. eCollection 2014.
An important advance in the study of visual attention has been the identification of a non-spatial component of attention that enhances the response to similar features or objects across the visual field. Here we test whether this non-spatial component can co-select individual features that are perceptually bound into a coherent object. We combined human psychophysics and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to demonstrate the ability to co-select individual features from perceptually coherent objects. Our study used binocular disparity and visual motion to define disparity structure-from-motion (dSFM) stimuli. Although the spatial attention system induced strong modulations of the fMRI response in visual regions, the non-spatial system's ability to co-select features of the dSFM stimulus was less pronounced and variable across subjects. Our results demonstrate that feature and global feature attention effects are variable across participants, suggesting that the feature attention system may be limited in its ability to automatically select features within the attended object. Careful comparison of the task design suggests that even minor differences in the perceptual task may be critical in revealing the presence of global feature attention.
视觉注意力研究中的一项重要进展是识别出了注意力的一个非空间成分，该成分可增强对整个视野中相似特征或物体的反应。在此，我们测试这种非空间成分是否能够共同选择在感知上组合成一个连贯物体的各个特征。我们结合了人类心理物理学和功能磁共振成像（fMRI），以证明从感知连贯物体中共同选择各个特征的能力。我们的研究使用双眼视差和视觉运动来定义视差运动结构（dSFM）刺激。尽管空间注意力系统在视觉区域引起了fMRI反应的强烈调制，但非空间系统共同选择dSFM刺激特征的能力在不同受试者中不太明显且存在差异。我们的结果表明，特征和全局特征注意力效应在不同参与者之间存在差异，这表明特征注意力系统在自动选择被关注物体内的特征方面的能力可能有限。对任务设计的仔细比较表明，即使是感知任务中的微小差异，对于揭示全局特征注意力的存在也可能至关重要。
