Warren Scott G, Yacoub Essa, Ghose Geoffrey M
1] Graduate Program in Neuroscience, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455, USA [2] Medical Scientist Training Program, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455, USA.
Center for Magnetic Resonance Research, Department of Radiology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455, USA.
Nat Commun. 2014 Dec 12;5:5643. doi: 10.1038/ncomms6643.
Our perceptions are often shaped by focusing our attention towards specific features or periods of time irrespective of location. Here we explore the physiological bases of these non-spatial forms of attention by imaging brain activity while subjects perform a challenging change-detection task. The task employs a continuously varying visual stimulus that, for any moment in time, selectively activates functionally distinct subpopulations of primary visual cortex (V1) neurons. When subjects are cued to the timing and nature of the change, the mapping of orientation preference across V1 systematically shifts towards the cued stimulus just prior to its appearance. A simple linear model can explain this shift: attentional changes are selectively targeted towards neural subpopulations, representing the attended feature at the times the feature was anticipated. Our results suggest that featural attention is mediated by a linear change in the responses of task-appropriate neurons across cortex during appropriate periods of time.
我们的感知往往受到对特定特征或时间段的关注所塑造，而与位置无关。在这里，我们通过在受试者执行具有挑战性的变化检测任务时对大脑活动进行成像，来探索这些非空间形式注意力的生理基础。该任务采用连续变化的视觉刺激，在任何时刻，它都会选择性地激活初级视觉皮层（V1）神经元中功能不同的亚群。当受试者被提示变化的时间和性质时，就在提示刺激出现之前，V1中方向偏好的映射会系统地朝着提示刺激移动。一个简单的线性模型可以解释这种移动：注意力的变化被选择性地指向神经亚群，这些亚群在预期特征出现时代表了被关注的特征。我们的结果表明，特征性注意力是由在适当时间段内跨皮层的任务相关神经元反应的线性变化介导的。
