Allocation and Control of Visual Attention

描述（由申请人提供）：选择性注意是感觉处理的关键组成部分。大量的信息冲击在感觉上皮上，很可能经常超过我们大脑的计算能力。在进化史上出现了几种策略，通过促进选择最突出的环境刺激来减少感觉处理的计算需求。其中一些策略，比如在皮层下消除冗余信息，似乎是连续发生的，没有意识的努力。其他策略，如仔细定位视觉或听觉中心凹朝向显著特征，取决于闭合的感觉运动回路，并且通常受到有意识思维和动态变化的行为目标的高度影响。选择性注意可以将有限的计算资源集中在输入刺激的子集上，从而加速或增强对相关刺激的行为反应。在过去的20年里，这个心理学框架已经稳步扩展到神经元水平，因为神经科学家越来越意识到，皮层甚至皮层下的神经元表现出惊人的动态重组能力，以支持不断变化的行为目标。在神经元水平上，选择性注意代表了另一种通过减弱无关信息和/或放大相关信息来控制大量流入的感觉信息的策略。本研究旨在探讨选择性注意对视皮层神经元选择性的影响。具体而言，这里描述的实验的目的是表征皮层电路负责动态变化的视觉敏感性和功能选择性在纹外区V4时，选择性注意力在视觉搜索过程中部署。为了研究这个问题，我们将记录和表征清醒的灵长类动物执行注意力要求的视觉搜索任务的神经元活动。在具体目标1中，我们将研究基于特征的注意如何改变V4神经元的首选刺激，以支持改进的目标检测。在目标2中，我们将研究在搜索目标的确切空间位置越来越不确定的情况下，空间注意力的分配是如何分布的。在这两个目标中，我们将结合联合收割机多种方法，即单神经元记录和局部场分析，以生成选择性注意如何在皮层神经元和皮层微回路水平上运作的更完整的画面。公共卫生相关性拟议中的研究将促进我们对“注意力”如何提高困难任务表现的理解。在这些实验中，我们将探讨如何视觉系统重新配置时，注意力在视觉搜索。在几种越来越常见的临床病症中，例如自闭症和注意力缺陷多动障碍，注意力部署的神经元机制被认为是严重受损的，经常直接导致适应不良行为。开发更好的注意力分配和控制模型将促进我们对这些疾病的理解和治疗潜力。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Selective attention represents a key component of sensory processing. The vast amount of information impinging on the sensory epithelium is likely to routinely exceed the computational capacities of our brains. Several strategies have appeared in evolutionary history to reduce the computational demands of sensory processing by facilitating selection of the most salient environmental stimuli. Some of these strategies, like the elimination of redundant information at sub-cortical levels, seems to occur continuously and without conscious effort. Other strategies, like careful orientation of the visual or acoustic fovea towards salient features, depends on a closed sensory-motor loop and are often highly influenced by conscious thought and dynamically changing behavioral goals. Selective attention can focus limited computational resources on subsets of incoming stimuli, thereby accelerating or enhancing behavioral responses to relevant stimuli. Over the last twenty years, this psychological framework has been steadily extended to the neuronal level as neuroscientists have become increasingly aware that cortical, and even sub-cortical, neurons exhibit a surprising ability to dynamically reorganize in support of changing behavioral goals. Selective attention, at the neuronal level, represents another strategy for controlling the large volume of inflowing sensory information by attenuating irrelevant and/or amplifying relevant information. This proposal explores the effects of selective attention on neuronal selectivity in extrastriate visual cortex. Specifically, the experiments described here are aimed at characterizing the cortical circuitry responsible for dynamic changes in visual sensitivity and feature selectivity in extrastriate area V4 when selective attention is deployed during visual search. To investigate this question, we will record and characterize neuronal activity in awake primates performing attentionally demanding visual search tasks. In Specific Aim 1 we will investigate how feature-based attention can alter the preferred stimuli of V4 neurons in support of improved target detection. In Aim 2 we will investigate how the allocation of spatial attention is distributed in the face of increasing uncertainty about the exact spatial position of a search target. In both of these Aims we will combine multiple approaches, namely single neuron recordings and local field analysis to generate a more complete picture of how selective attention operates at the level of the cortical neuron and cortical microcircuit. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE The proposed research will advance our understanding of how "paying attention" improves performance on difficult tasks. In these experiments we will investigate how the visual system reconfigures when attention is deployed during visual search. In several increasingly common clinical conditions, for example autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, the neuronal mechanisms underlying attentional deployment are thought to be substantially impaired, frequently leading directly to maladaptive behavior. Developing better models of attentional allocation and control will advance our understanding and the potential for treatment of these conditions.