A quantitative framework of attentional selection

注意选择是适应行为的必要前提。大脑从我们的感觉器官接收大量的信息。完全处理所有这些信息将超过人类大脑的能力，因此注意力只选择其中一些信息进行深入处理，而牺牲其他不太相关的信息。注意力是理解心理能力的一个关键概念：它对感知、记忆、认知、情感和意识产生重要影响，因此我们看到、记住、思考、感觉和体验的东西在很大程度上都是选择性注意的功能。选择性注意刺激增强了视觉皮层对刺激的处理，提高了运动反应的准确性和速度。虽然这些发现之间的联系似乎很明显，但我们对这种联系的理解却令人惊讶地模糊：我们知道，在许多试验的平均值中，当注意到引发刺激时，皮层处理和行为表现的测量得到增强，但我们对这些注意力效应如何定量相关的了解非常有限。拟议的项目旨在开发一个视觉注意力的定量模型，直接将视觉皮层中刺激处理的电生理测量与行为结果联系起来。这将在三个相关目标的序列中实现：首先，我们将研究不同维度（例如位置，颜色，方向或运动）的并发注意力选择如何影响刺激处理。这将使我们能够更好地理解在复杂的现实情况下的注意选择，并有利于在随后的实验中通过限制模型参数的定量建模。其次，我们将进行一系列的三个EEG实验，以揭示视觉皮层的刺激处理和行为措施的注意调制之间的定量连接。这将显着提高我们的理解如何注意力支持自适应behavior.Third，我们将研究如何监测行为表现是用来重新调整注意力模型参数随着时间的推移，以优化随后的性能。这将帮助我们理解为什么同一任务的表现会随着时间的推移而波动。这些问题的回答有助于我们从根本上理解视觉注意和知觉。这项研究可能对特殊人群（例如儿童和老年参与者，注意力障碍患者）的研究产生影响，因为本项目的实验方案和建模方法可以用于更好地了解群体差异。此外，这项工作可以促进脑机接口（BCI）的进一步发展，它允许受试者通过转移注意力来传达他们的意图，并且通常采用与本项目类似的技术方法。

Attentional selection is an essential prerequisite for adaptive behaviour. The brain receives a vast amount of information from our sensory organs. Fully processing all of this information would exceed the capacity of the human brain, therefore attention selects only some of this information for in-depth processing at the expense of other, less relevant information. Attention is a key concept in the understanding of mental abilities: it critically influences perception, memory, cognition, emotion and consciousness, so that what we see, remember, think, feel and experience is, to a large extent, a function of selective attention.Selectively attending to a stimulus enhances its processing in visual cortex and increases accuracy and speed of motor responses. While the connection between these findings seems obvious, our understanding of this connection is surprisingly vague: we know that, in the average of many trials, measures of cortical processing and behavioural performance are enhanced when the eliciting stimulus is attended, but we have very limited understanding of how these attentional effects are quantitatively related.The proposed project aims to develop a quantitative model of visual attention that directly links electrophysiological measures of stimulus processing in visual cortex with behavioural outcomes. This will be achieved in a sequence of three connected objectives:First, we will examine how concurrent attentional selection of different dimensions (e.g. location, colour, orientation or motion) affects stimulus processing. This will allow us to better understand attentional selection in complex realistic situations and facilitates quantitative modelling in the subsequent experiments by restricting model parameters.Second, we will conduct a series of three EEG experiments in order to uncover the quantitative connections between attentional modulation of stimulus processing in visual cortex and behavioural measures. This will significantly enhance our understanding of how attention supports adaptive behaviour.Third, we will investigate how monitoring of behavioural performance is used to readjust attentional model parameters over time in order to optimise subsequent performance. This will help us understand why performance on the same task fluctuates over time. It also provides important information on why attentional model parameters take on specific values.The answers to these questions fundamentally contribute to our understanding of visual attention and perception. This research may have implications for research in special populations (e.g. children and older participants, patients with attentional disorders) as the experimental protocols and modelling approaches of the present project could be applied to gain a better understanding of group differences. Additionally, this work may facilitate the further development of Brain Computer Interfaces (BCIs), which allow subjects to convey their intentions by shifting attention and which commonly employ similar technical approaches as the present project.