Neural Mechanism of Attentional Guidance During Search Through Complex Scenes

描述（由申请人提供）： 人类和猴子都依靠视觉来寻找食物，寻找有吸引力的伴侣，并发现危险。此外，我们经常在各种复杂的环境中实现这些目标。上面提到的每一项任务--以及我们日常生活中的其他几十项任务--都是视觉搜索任务。在这些任务中，我们扫描杂乱的视觉场景，以定位和识别感兴趣的对象。虽然场景表征对搜索的影响程度在认知心理学的研究中逐渐变得清晰，但灵长类动物场景感知的神经生理机制仍然知之甚少。具体来说，我们仍然不知道场景是如何在大脑中编码的，以及这些表征如何影响搜索过程中的注意力引导。该基金旨在通过使用行为测试和生理记录的组合来揭示场景搜索的神经生理机制，这些机制由注意力的计算模型预测得出。生理学实验将集中在涉及对象处理（下颞叶皮层，IT）和注意力控制（外侧顶内区，LIP）的高级视觉区域。因此，本项目的具体目标是：1）了解下颞叶皮层在场景表征中的作用; 2）测试IT中的场景相关活动作为一种生理机制的假设，通过这种机制，场景上下文线索可以使LIP中的活动偏向并引导视觉搜索。这些研究将为复杂场景环境的神经表征和两个大脑区域之间的通信提供重要的新见解，这两个大脑区域相互作用以产生高水平的视觉。这项研究的长期目标是了解大脑如何有效地处理在真实的世界中遇到的信息，以便有可能恢复或增强视觉系统受损的个人的感知处理。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Both humans and monkeys rely on visual perception to seek food, find attractive mates, and spot danger. Moreover, we often accomplish these goals in a varied and complex environment. Each of the aforementioned tasks - and dozens of others in our everyday lives - is a visual search task. In these tasks, we scan through a cluttered visual scene to locate and identify objects of interest. While the degree to which scene representation affects search has progressively become clearer from research in cognitive psychology, the neurophysiological mechanisms that underlie scene perception in primates are still poorly understood. Specifically, it is still unknown how scenes are encoded in the brain and how these representations affect attentional guidance during search. This grant aims to reveal the neurophysiological mechanisms that underlie scene search by using a combination of behavioral testing and physiological recording informed by predictions from computational models of attention. Physiological experiments will focus on high level visual areas involved in both object processing (inferior temporal cortex, IT) and in attentional control (the lateral intraparietal area, LIP). Therefore, the specific aims of this project are to: 1) Understand the role of the inferior temporal cortex in scene representation; and 2) Test the hypothesis that scene-related activity in IT serves as a physiological mechanism through which scene contextual cues can bias activity in LIP and guide visual search. These studies will provide important new insights into both the neural representation of complex scene environments and the communication between two brain regions that interact to produce high level vision. The long term goal of this research is to understand how the brain efficiently processes information encountered in the real world so as to potentially restore or augment perceptual processing in individuals with compromised visual systems.