Sheikh Abdirashid Sumiya, Knapen Tomas, Dumoulin Serge O
Spinoza Centre for Neuroimaging, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Computational Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
J Vis. 2025 Sep 2;25(11):3. doi: 10.1167/jov.25.11.3.
We alter our sampling of visual space not only by where we direct our gaze, but also by where and how we direct our attention. Attention attracts receptive fields toward the attended position, but our understanding of this process is limited. Here we show that the degree of this attraction toward the attended locus is dictated not just by the attended position, but also by the precision of attention. We manipulated attentional precision while using 7T functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure population receptive field (pRF) properties. Participants performed the same color-proportion detection task either focused at fixation (0.1° radius) or distributed across the entire display (>5° radius). We observed blood oxygenation level-dependent response amplitude increases as a function of the task, with selective increases in foveal pRFs for the focused attention task and vice versa for the distributed attention task. Furthermore, cortical spatial tuning changed as a function of attentional precision. Specifically, focused attention more strongly attracted pRFs toward the attended locus compared with distributed attention. This attraction also depended on the degree of overlap between a pRF and the attention field. A Gaussian attention field model with an offset on the attention field explained our results. Together, our observations indicate the spatial distribution of attention dictates the degree of its resampling of visual space.
我们不仅通过注视的方向来改变对视觉空间的采样，还通过注意力的指向位置和方式来改变。注意力会将感受野吸引到被关注的位置，但我们对这一过程的理解是有限的。在这里，我们表明，对被关注位置的这种吸引程度不仅取决于被关注的位置，还取决于注意力的精确程度。我们在使用7T功能磁共振成像测量群体感受野（pRF）特性的同时，操纵了注意力的精确程度。参与者执行相同的颜色比例检测任务，要么集中在注视点（半径0.1°），要么分布在整个显示屏上（半径>5°）。我们观察到血氧水平依赖的反应幅度随任务而增加，在集中注意力任务中，中央凹pRF有选择性增加，而在分散注意力任务中则相反。此外，皮质空间调谐随注意力精确程度而变化。具体而言，与分散注意力相比，集中注意力更强烈地将pRF吸引到被关注的位置。这种吸引还取决于pRF与注意力场之间的重叠程度。一个在注意力场上有偏移的高斯注意力场模型解释了我们的结果。总之，我们的观察结果表明，注意力的空间分布决定了其对视觉空间重新采样的程度。
