School of Psychology, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2021 Feb;376(1817):20190688. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2019.0688. Epub 2020 Dec 14.
When we search for an object in an array or anticipate attending to a future object, we create an 'attentional template' of the object. The definitions of attentional templates and visual imagery share many similarities as well as many of the same neural characteristics. However, the phenomenology of these attentional templates and their neural similarities to visual imagery and perception are rarely, if ever discussed. Here, we investigate the relationship between these two forms of non-retinal phantom vision through the use of the binocular rivalry technique, which allows us to measure the sensory strength of attentional templates in the absence of concurrent perceptual stimuli. We find that attentional templates correlate with both feature-based attention and visual imagery. Attentional templates, like imagery, were significantly disrupted by the presence of irrelevant visual stimuli, while feature-based attention was not. We also found that a special population who lack the ability to visualize (aphantasia), showed evidence of feature-based attention when measured using the binocular rivalry paradigm, but not attentional templates. Taken together, these data suggest functional similarities between attentional templates and visual imagery, advancing the theory of visual imagery as a general simulation tool used across cognition. This article is part of the theme issue 'Offline perception: voluntary and spontaneous perceptual experiences without matching external stimulation'.
当我们在数组中搜索一个对象或预期关注未来的对象时，我们会创建该对象的“注意模板”。注意模板和视觉意象的定义有许多相似之处，也有许多相同的神经特征。然而，这些注意模板的现象学及其与视觉意象和感知的神经相似性很少被讨论。在这里，我们通过使用双眼竞争技术来研究这两种非视网膜幻觉视觉形式之间的关系，该技术允许我们在没有同时存在的感知刺激的情况下测量注意模板的感觉强度。我们发现注意模板与基于特征的注意力和视觉意象都相关。与意象一样，注意模板会因存在不相关的视觉刺激而受到显著干扰，而基于特征的注意力则不会。我们还发现，一个特殊的人群，他们缺乏可视化的能力（失认症），当使用双眼竞争范式进行测量时，表现出基于特征的注意力的证据，但没有注意模板。总之，这些数据表明注意模板和视觉意象之间存在功能相似性，这推进了视觉意象作为一种跨认知使用的通用模拟工具的理论。本文是主题为“离线感知：没有匹配外部刺激的自愿和自发感知体验”的一部分。
