Neural Mechanisms of Grouping and Stimulus Selection

这项研究的长期目标是在单个神经元和大脑皮层回路水平上了解选择性视觉注意的神经机制，并确定这些机制如何影响知觉和行为。概念的起点是观察到大脑在任何时刻能够处理的视觉信息量是有限的。例如，当观察者被要求识别一个短暂呈现的场景中的对象时，他们会随着对象数量的增加而变得不那么准确。这项拟议的研究将结合视觉心理物理学和单位生理学来测试对这种能力限制的两种替代解释，并研究使大脑能够从无关的分心事物中选择行为相关刺激的神经机制。来自这项拟议研究的见解有望帮助理解、诊断和治疗注意力机制失效的神经心理障碍，如忽视、巴林特综合征、ADHD和自闭症的注意力方面。

The long-range goal of this research is to understand the neural mechanisms of selective visual attention at the level of the individual neuron and the cortical circuit, and to determine how these mechanisms affect perception and behavior. The conceptual starting point is the observation that the brain is limited in the amount of visual information it can process at any moment in time. For instance, when observers are asked to identify the objects in a briefly presented scene, they become less accurate as the number of objects increases. The proposed research will use a combination of visual psychophysics and single-unit physiology to test two alternative explanations for this capacity limitation, and to investigate the neural mechanisms that enable the brain to select behaviorally relevant stimuli from among irrelevant distracters. Insights from the proposed research are expected to help in understanding, diagnosis and treatment of neuropsychological disorders in which attentional mechanisms fail, such as neglect, Balint's syndrome, ADHD, and attentional aspects of autism.