Neuronal Measures of the State of Visual Attention

视觉注意力状态的神经元测量

• 批准号: 8258715
• 负责人: John H.R. Maunsell
• 金额: $ 42.04万
• 依托单位: HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2011-05-01 至 2014-04-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/8258715
• 关键词: Affect; Afferent Neurons; Attention; Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder; Behavior; Behavior Control; Behavior Disorders; Behavioral; Brain; Cerebral cortex; Cerebral hemisphere; Child; Childhood; Cognitive; Color; Coupled; Cues; Data; Diagnosis; Individual; Instruction; Location; Measurement; Measures; Mediating; Methods; Monitor; Monkeys; Motion; Nervous system structure; Neurons; Performance; Physiological; Population; Population Sizes; Psychometrics; Psychophysiology; Relative (related person); Research; Resources; Response to stimulus physiology; Rewards; Sensory; Series; Signal Transduction; Specific qualifier value; Stimulus; Time; United States; V4 neuron; Visual; Visual Cortex; Visual Fields; Visual attention; area V4; base; experience; improved; insight; neurophysiology; novel; physical separation; public health relevance; research study; response; retinotopic; shared attention; theories; tool; visual performance; visual process; visual processing; visual stimulus

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Virtually all studies of the neuronal mechanisms that underlie attention compare average brain activity when subjects are asked to attend to different objects, locations or features. Implicit in this approach is the assumption that a subject's state of attention remains relatively constant when they follow a given instruction. Yet anyone who has performed an attention-demanding task knows that attention can drift rapidly and widely. Experimenters can specify attentional conditions precisely, but have limited and indirect influence on a subject's actual attentional state on a given experimental trial. This is an important limitation, because fluctuations in attention can systematically affect estimates of how attention influences neuronal activity and behavioral ability. Assessing the actual attentional state of a subject at a given moment has not been easy to accomplish. However, in recent experiments we have discovered that appropriate analysis of the signals from populations of individual neurons recorded simultaneously in visual cerebral cortex can provide a precise measure of current attentional state. These measurements confirm that attention fluctuates widely even when instructions, stimuli and rewards are fixed. Moreover, they reveal that these fluctuations in attention are associated with profound differences in behavioral performance within fixed experimental situations. The ability to measure attentional state within individual trials provides a powerful tool for exploring how attention affects sensory signals and behavioral performance. We propose experiments that will exploit this novel method to explore questions about the neuronal basis of visual attention that have previously been inaccessible. Our first specific aim is to use simultaneous recordings from different populations of individual V4 neurons to determine whether the control of attention at different retinotopic representations is coordinated or independent. Our second specific aim involves analogous experiments that will provide direct measurements of whether neuronal control of spatial and feature attention is coupled. The final specific aim is to measure attentional state as a function of time within trials to compare the dynamics of stimulus responses with those of attentional shifts produced by exogenous or endogenous cues and those of the behavioral consequences of the attention shifts. Collectively, these experiments will provide new insights into the mechanisms that allocate attention to different visual stimuli and how the neuronal modulations they cause improve behavioral performance. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Attention is critical to perceptual and cognitive performance, and attention deficits are the most commonly diagnosed behavioral disorder of childhood, with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) affecting as many as 5% of children in the United States [1]. Better understanding of basic neuronal mechanisms related to attention and their interaction with sensory signals is needed for guiding assessment, diagnosis and treatment of deficits of attention. The proposed research will investigate how attention affects visual processing in the nervous system, and in particular how rapidly and independently control signals related to attention are distributed to different regions of visual cerebral cortex.

描述（由申请人提供）：几乎所有关于注意力神经机制的研究都比较了受试者被要求注意不同物体、位置或特征时的平均大脑活动。这种方法隐含的假设是，当受试者遵循给定的指令时，他们的注意力状态保持相对恒定。然而，任何一个完成过需要注意力的任务的人都知道，注意力可以迅速而广泛地漂移。实验者可以精确地指定注意条件，但在给定的实验测试中，对被试的实际注意状态的影响有限且间接。这是一个重要的限制，因为注意力的波动会系统地影响对注意力如何影响神经元活动和行为能力的估计。评估一个受试者在特定时刻的实际注意力状态并不容易实现。然而，在最近的实验中，我们已经发现，适当的分析信号的群体的单个神经元同时记录在视觉大脑皮层可以提供一个精确的测量当前的注意力状态。这些测量结果证实，即使在指令、刺激和奖励固定的情况下，注意力的波动也很大。此外，他们揭示了这些注意力的波动与固定实验情况下行为表现的深刻差异有关。在个体试验中测量注意力状态的能力为探索注意力如何影响感觉信号和行为表现提供了强大的工具。我们提出的实验，将利用这种新的方法来探索以前无法访问的视觉注意的神经元基础的问题。我们的第一个具体目标是使用来自不同群体的单个V4神经元的同步记录，以确定在不同retinotopic表示的注意力控制是协调的还是独立的。我们的第二个具体目标涉及类似的实验，将提供直接测量的神经元控制的空间和功能的注意力是否耦合。最后的具体目标是测量注意力状态作为试验内的时间的函数，以比较刺激反应的动态与由外源性或内源性线索产生的注意力转移和注意力转移的行为后果。总的来说，这些实验将为将注意力分配给不同视觉刺激的机制以及它们引起的神经元调制如何改善行为表现提供新的见解。 公共卫生关系：注意力对知觉和认知表现至关重要，注意力缺陷是儿童期最常见的诊断行为障碍，注意力缺陷多动障碍（ADHD）影响美国多达5%的儿童[1]。更好地理解与注意力相关的基本神经机制及其与感觉信号的相互作用，对于指导注意力缺陷的评估、诊断和治疗是必要的。这项研究将探讨注意力如何影响神经系统中的视觉处理，特别是如何快速和独立地控制与注意力相关的信号分布到视觉大脑皮层的不同区域。