Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Boston University, Boston, MA, 02215, USA.
Center for Systems Neuroscience, Boston University, Boston, MA, 02215, USA.
Nat Commun. 2019 Dec 11;10(1):5660. doi: 10.1038/s41467-019-13597-1.
Although attention is known to increase the gain of visuocortical responses, its underlying neural computations remain unclear. Here, we use fMRI to test the hypothesis that a neural population's ability to be modulated by attention is dependent on divisive normalization. To do so, we leverage the feature-tuned properties of normalization and find that visuocortical responses to stimuli sharing features normalize each other more strongly. Comparing these normalization measures to measures of attentional modulation, we demonstrate that subpopulations which exhibit stronger normalization also exhibit larger attentional benefits. In a converging experiment, we reveal that attentional benefits are greatest when a subpopulation is forced into a state of stronger normalization. Taken together, these results suggest that the degree to which a subpopulation exhibits normalization plays a role in dictating its potential for attentional benefits.
尽管众所周知，注意力会增加视皮层反应的增益，但它的潜在神经计算仍不清楚。在这里，我们使用 fMRI 来测试一个假设，即一个神经群体被注意力调节的能力取决于分散性归一化。为此，我们利用归一化的特征调谐特性，发现对具有相同特征的刺激的视皮层反应相互归一化得更强。将这些归一化度量与注意力调节的度量进行比较，我们证明了表现出更强归一化的子群体也表现出更大的注意力收益。在一个收敛的实验中，我们揭示了当一个子群体被迫进入更强的归一化状态时，注意力的收益最大。总之，这些结果表明，子群体表现出归一化的程度在决定其注意力收益的潜力方面起着作用。
