Top-down and Bottom-up Control of Visual Attention: Evidence from ERPs and Eye Tracking

 描述（由申请人提供）：视觉注意力对日常运作至关重要。然而，一些关于视觉注意本质的基本问题仍然没有得到解决。目前，关于视觉注意力是如何被不自觉地引导的，存在着激烈的争论。刺激驱动理论提出，显著刺激可以自动“捕获”视觉。为了向前迈进，这两个对立的帐户之间的一些和解是迫切需要的。 这项拟议中的研究将测试一种新的混合抑制帐户的注意力捕获，它假定"注意到我"的信号产生的显着信息被抑制在视觉处理的早期。这种自上而下的抑制信号可以由PD ERP组件索引。在拟议的实验中，我们测试行为捕获效应和自上而下的抑制之间的关系。关键的预测是，即使没有行为捕获效应，我们仍然应该找到一个PD事件相关电位（ERP）的组成部分，以显着的项目。如果成功的话，这种混合模式可以解决20年来关于视觉干扰本质的争论。 拟议的研究金有几个培训目标。作为博士后学者，申请人将接受先进的ERP和眼动追踪技术的培训。申请人还将获得成为加州大学戴维斯分校研究社区成员的宝贵机会，该社区以其在认知神经科学方面的开创性合作研究而享誉国际。该奖学金对于申请人的长期职业发展至关重要，申请人寻求开发一个独立的研究项目，将神经成像和行为技术相结合，以研究选择性视觉注意力和高阶视觉功能。

 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Visual attention is imperative for day-to-day functioning. However, some basic questions about the nature of visual attention remain unresolved. There is currently a heated debate about how visual attention is involuntarily guided. Stimulus-driven theories propose that salient stimuli can automatically "capture" visual sTo move forward, some reconciliation between these two opposing accounts is urgently needed. The proposed research will test a new hybrid suppression account of attention capture, which posits that "attend-to-me" signals produced by salient information are suppressed early in visual processing. This top- down suppression signal can be indexed by the PD ERP component. In the proposed experiments, we test the relationship between the presence of behavioral capture effects and top-down suppression. The key prediction is that even when the behavioral capture effects are absent, we should still find a PD event-related potential (ERP) component to salient item. If successful, this hybrid model could resolve a twenty year debate on the nature of visual distraction. The proposed fellowship has several training goals. As a postdoctoral scholar, the applicant would receive training in advanced ERP and eyetracking techniques. The applicant would also gain the valuable opportunity to become a member of the UC Davis research community, which is internationally-renowned for its groundbreaking collaborative research in cognitive neuroscience. This fellowship is vital for the long-term career development of the applicant, who seeks to develop an independent research program that combines neuroimaging and behavioral techniques to study selective visual attention and high-order visual functioning.