Bushnell P J
Neurotoxicology Division, US Environmental Protection Agency, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina 27711, USA.
Behav Neurosci. 1995 Dec;109(6):1095-105. doi: 10.1037//0735-7044.109.6.1095.
Covert shifts of visual attention in space have been quantified by measuring the effects of visual cues on the detection of visual targets in humans and monkeys maintaining visual fixation. These observations of "covert orienting" have provided important information regarding the neurobiology of visual attention in primates. This article describes a cued spatial target detection task for physically unrestrained rats. Valid cues (spatially contiguous with the target) enhanced target detection, and invalid cues (spatially discontiguous with the target) degraded target detection. Both visual and auditory cues were effective. These validity effects could not be explained by stimulus additivity or response preparation mechanisms, whereas a cue-independent "alerting effect" appeared to reflect response preparation. The effects compare favorably with primate work and suggest that this method may enable assessment of visual attention shifts in rats.
通过测量视觉线索对保持视觉注视的人类和猴子检测视觉目标的影响，已对视觉注意在空间中的隐蔽转移进行了量化。这些“隐蔽定向”的观察结果为灵长类动物视觉注意的神经生物学提供了重要信息。本文描述了一种用于身体不受束缚的大鼠的线索化空间目标检测任务。有效线索（与目标在空间上相邻）增强了目标检测，而无效线索（与目标在空间上不相邻）则降低了目标检测。视觉和听觉线索均有效。这些有效性效应无法用刺激相加或反应准备机制来解释，而一种与线索无关的“警觉效应”似乎反映了反应准备。这些效应与灵长类动物的研究结果相比具有优势，表明这种方法可能有助于评估大鼠的视觉注意转移。
