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出人类大脑的能力，因此注意力只选择其中的一些信息进行深入处理，而牺牲了其他不太相关的信息。注意是理解心理能力的一个关键概念：它对感知、记忆、认知、情感和意识产生关键影响，因此我们所看到的、记住的、思考的、感觉的和经历的，在很大程度上都是选择性注意的功能。选择性地关注刺激可以增强视觉皮层对刺激的处理，提高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，当引起刺激的刺激出现时，对皮层处理和行为表现的测量得到了增强，但我们对这些注意力效应如何在数量上相关的理解非常有限。该项目旨在建立视觉注意的定量模型，将视觉皮层刺激处理的电生理测量与行为结果直接联系起来。这将通过三个相互关联的目标来实现：首先，我们将研究不同维度（例如位置、颜色、方向或运动）的并发注意选择如何影响刺激处理。这将使我们能够更好地理解复杂现实情况下的注意选择，并通过限制模型参数，为后续实验中的定量建模提供便利。其次，我们将进行一系列的三个脑电图实验，以揭示视觉皮层刺激加工的注意调制与行为测量之间的定量联系。这将大大增强我们对注意力如何支持适应性行为的理解。第三，我们将研究如何使用行为表现监测来随着时间的推移重新调整注意模型参数，以优化后续表现。这将帮助我们理解为什么同一任务的性能会随时间波动。它还提供了关于为什么注意力模型参数取特定值的重要信息。这些问题的答案从根本上有助于我们对视觉注意和感知的理解。这项研究可能对特殊人群（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应用于更好地了解群体差异。此外，这项工作可能会促进脑机接口（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.