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Current Biology : CB Mar 2024An important task for the visual system is to identify and segregate objects from background. Figure-ground illusions, such as Edgar Rubin's bistable 'vase-faces...
An important task for the visual system is to identify and segregate objects from background. Figure-ground illusions, such as Edgar Rubin's bistable 'vase-faces illusion', make the point clearly: we see either a central vase or lateral faces, alternating spontaneously, but never both images simultaneously. The border is perceptually assigned to either faces or vase, which become figure, the other shapeless background. The stochastic alternation between figure and ground probably reflects mutual inhibitory processes that ensure a single perceptual outcome. Which shape dominates perception depends on many factors, such as size, symmetry, convexity, enclosure, and so on, as well as attention and intention. Here we show that the assignment of the visual border can be strongly influenced by auditory input, far more than is possible by voluntary intention. VIDEO ABSTRACT.
Topics: Humans; Pattern Recognition, Visual; Photic Stimulation; Illusions; Attention; Face
PubMed: 38531313
DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2024.01.043 -
PloS One 2023We study the role of attention and working memory in choices where options are presented sequentially rather than simultaneously. We build a model where a costly...
We study the role of attention and working memory in choices where options are presented sequentially rather than simultaneously. We build a model where a costly attention effort is chosen, which can vary over time. Evidence is accumulated proportionally to this effort and the utility of the reward. Crucially, the evidence accumulated decays over time. Optimal attention allocation maximizes expected utility from final choice; the optimal solution takes the decay into account, so attention is preferentially devoted to later times; but convexity of the flow attention cost prevents it from being concentrated near the end. We test this model with a choice experiment where participants observe sequentially two options. In our data the option presented first is, everything else being equal, significantly less likely to be chosen. This recency effect has a natural explanation with appropriate parameter values in our model of leaky evidence accumulation, where the decline is stronger for the option observed first. Analysis of choice, response time and brain imaging data provide support for the model. Working memory plays an essential role. The recency bias is stronger for participants with weaker performance in working memory tasks. Also activity in parietal areas, coding the stored value in working, declines over time as predicted.
Topics: Humans; Attention; Brain; Memory, Short-Term; Reaction Time; Reward; Choice Behavior
PubMed: 37819949
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0284127 -
Cerebral Cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) Jun 2023Studies have identified several brain regions whose activations facilitate attentional deployment via long-term memories. We analyzed task-based functional connectivity...
Studies have identified several brain regions whose activations facilitate attentional deployment via long-term memories. We analyzed task-based functional connectivity at the network and node-specific level to characterize large-scale communication between brain regions underlying long-term memory guided attention. We predicted default mode, cognitive control, and dorsal attention subnetworks would contribute differentially to long-term memory guided attention, such that network-level connectivity would shift based on attentional demands, requiring contribution of memory-specific nodes within default mode and cognitive control subnetworks. We expected that these nodes would increase connectivity with one another and with dorsal attention subnetworks during long-term memory guided attention. Additionally, we hypothesized connectivity between cognitive control and dorsal attention subnetworks facilitating external attentional demands. Our results identified both network-based and node-specific interactions that facilitate different components of LTM-guided attention, suggesting a crucial role across the posterior precuneus and restrosplenial cortex, acting independently from the divisions of default mode and cognitive control subnetworks. We found a gradient of precuneus connectivity, with dorsal precuneus connecting to cognitive control and dorsal attention regions, and ventral precuneus connecting across all subnetworks. Additionally, retrosplenial cortex showed increased connectivity across subnetworks. We suggest that connectivity from dorsal posterior midline regions is critical for the integration of external information with internal memory that facilitates long-term memory guided attention.
Topics: Brain Mapping; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Neural Pathways; Brain; Attention; Nerve Net
PubMed: 36977634
DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhad073 -
PeerJ 2023Sustained attention is one of the basic abilities of humans to maintain concentration on relevant information while ignoring irrelevant information over extended... (Review)
Review
Sustained attention is one of the basic abilities of humans to maintain concentration on relevant information while ignoring irrelevant information over extended periods. The purpose of the review is to provide insight into how to integrate neural mechanisms of sustained attention with computational models to facilitate research and application. Although many studies have assessed attention, the evaluation of humans' sustained attention is not sufficiently comprehensive. Hence, this study provides a current review on both neural mechanisms and computational models of visual sustained attention. We first review models, measurements, and neural mechanisms of sustained attention and propose plausible neural pathways for visual sustained attention. Next, we analyze and compare the different computational models of sustained attention that the previous reviews have not systematically summarized. We then provide computational models for automatically detecting vigilance states and evaluation of sustained attention. Finally, we outline possible future trends in the research field of sustained attention.
Topics: Humans; Attention; Neural Pathways; Wakefulness; Models, Neurological; Computer Simulation
PubMed: 37334118
DOI: 10.7717/peerj.15351 -
Consciousness and Cognition Jan 2024We seem to have rich experience across our visual field. Yet we are surprisingly poor at tasks involving the periphery and low spatial attention. Recently, Lau and...
We seem to have rich experience across our visual field. Yet we are surprisingly poor at tasks involving the periphery and low spatial attention. Recently, Lau and collaborators have argued that a phenomenon known as "subjective inflation" allows us to reconcile these phenomena. I show inflation is consistent with multiple interpretations, with starkly different consequences for richness and for theories of consciousness more broadly. What's more, we have only weak reasons favouring any of these interpretations over the others. I provisionally argue for an interpretation on which subjective experience is genuinely rich, but (in peripheral/unattended areas) unreliable as a guide to the external world. The main challenge for this view is that it appears to imply that experience in the periphery is not just unreliable but unstable. However, I argue that this consequence, while initially appearing unintuitive, is in fact plausible.
Topics: Humans; Visual Perception; Attention; Consciousness; Visual Fields
PubMed: 38150781
DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2023.103624 -
Journal of Behavioral Addictions Oct 2023Implicit cognitions may be involved in the development and maintenance of specific Internet use disorders such as problematic social network use (PSNU). In more detail,... (Review)
Review
Implicit cognitions may be involved in the development and maintenance of specific Internet use disorders such as problematic social network use (PSNU). In more detail, implicit attitude, attentional biases, approach and avoidance tendencies as well as semantic memory associations are considered relevant in the context of PSNU. This viewpoint article summarizes the available literature on implicit cognitions in PSNU. We systematically reviewed articles of implicit cognitions in PSNU from PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, and ProQuest databases based on a targeted search strategy and assessed using predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria. The present findings suggest that specific implicit cognitions are important in the context of PSNU and therefore show parallels to other addictive behaviors. However, the empirical evidence is limited to a few studies on this topic. Implicit cognitions in PSNU should be explored in more depth and in the context of other affective and cognitive mechanisms in future work.
Topics: Humans; Cognition; Behavior, Addictive; Attentional Bias; Social Networking
PubMed: 37450371
DOI: 10.1556/2006.2023.00035 -
Attention, Perception & Psychophysics May 2024Competing theories attempt to explain what guides eye movements when exploring natural scenes: bottom-up image salience and top-down semantic salience. In one study, we...
Competing theories attempt to explain what guides eye movements when exploring natural scenes: bottom-up image salience and top-down semantic salience. In one study, we apply language-based analyses to quantify the well-known observation that task influences gaze in natural scenes. Subjects viewed ten scenes as if they were performing one of two tasks. We found that the semantic similarity between the task and the labels of objects in the scenes captured the task-dependence of gaze (t(39) = 13.083; p < 0.001). In another study, we examined whether image salience or semantic salience better predicts gaze during a search task, and if viewing strategies are affected by searching for targets of high or low semantic relevance to the scene. Subjects searched 100 scenes for a high- or low-relevance object. We found that image salience becomes a worse predictor of gaze across successive fixations, while semantic salience remains a consistent predictor (X(1, N=40) = 75.148, p < .001). Furthermore, we found that semantic salience decreased as object relevance decreased (t(39) = 2.304; p = .027). These results suggest that semantic salience is a useful predictor of gaze during task-related scene viewing, and that even in target-absent trials, gaze is modulated by the relevance of a search target to the scene in which it might be located.
Topics: Humans; Semantics; Fixation, Ocular; Attention; Male; Female; Young Adult; Adult; Pattern Recognition, Visual; Eye Movements
PubMed: 38594445
DOI: 10.3758/s13414-024-02883-w -
NeuroImage Jul 2023Humans adjust their behavioral strategies based on feedback, a process that may depend on intrinsic preferences and contextual factors such as visual salience. In this...
Humans adjust their behavioral strategies based on feedback, a process that may depend on intrinsic preferences and contextual factors such as visual salience. In this study, we hypothesized that decision-making based on visual salience is influenced by habitual and goal-directed processes, which can be evidenced by changes in attention and subjective valuation systems. To test this hypothesis, we conducted a series of studies to investigate the behavioral and neural mechanisms underlying visual salience-driven decision-making. We first established the baseline behavioral strategy without salience in Experiment 1 (n = 21). We then highlighted the utility or performance dimension of the chosen outcome using colors in Experiment 2 (n = 30). We demonstrated that the difference in staying frequency increased along the salient dimension, confirming a salience effect. Furthermore, the salience effect was abolished when directional information was removed in Experiment 3 (n = 28), suggesting that the salience effect is feedback-specific. To generalize our findings, we replicated the feedback-specific salience effects using eye-tracking and text emphasis. The fixation differences between the chosen and unchosen values were enhanced along the feedback-specific salient dimension in Experiment 4 (n = 48) but unchanged after removing feedback-specific information in Experiment 5 (n = 32). Moreover, the staying frequency was correlated with fixation properties, confirming that salience guides attention deployment. Lastly, our neuroimaging study (Experiment 6, n = 25) showed that the striatum subregions encoded salience-based outcome evaluation, while the vmPFC encoded salience-based behavioral adjustments. The connectivity of the vmPFC-ventral striatum accounted for individual differences in utility-driven, whereas the vmPFC-dmPFC for performance-driven behavioral adjustments. Together, our results provide a neurocognitive account of how task-irrelevant visual salience drives decision-making by involving attention and the frontal-striatal valuation systems. PUBLIC SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT: Humans may use the current outcome to make behavior adjustments. How this occurs may depend on stable individual preferences and contextual factors, such as visual salience. Under the hypothesis that visual salience determines attention and subsequently modulates subjective valuation, we investigated the underlying behavioral and neural bases of visual-context-guided outcome evaluation and behavioral adjustments. Our findings suggest that the reward system is orchestrated by visual context and highlight the critical role of attention and the frontal-striatal neural circuit in visual-context-guided decision-making that may involve habitual and goal-directed processes.
Topics: Humans; Decision Making; Attention; Ventral Striatum; Neostriatum; Cognition; Reward
PubMed: 37192677
DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2023.120170 -
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review Feb 2024Though listeners readily recognize speech from a variety of talkers, accommodating talker variability comes at a cost: Myriad studies have shown that listeners are... (Review)
Review
Though listeners readily recognize speech from a variety of talkers, accommodating talker variability comes at a cost: Myriad studies have shown that listeners are slower to recognize a spoken word when there is talker variability compared with when talker is held constant. This review focuses on two possible theoretical mechanisms for the emergence of these processing penalties. One view is that multitalker processing costs arise through a resource-demanding talker accommodation process, wherein listeners compare sensory representations against hypothesized perceptual candidates and error signals are used to adjust the acoustic-to-phonetic mapping (an active control process known as contextual tuning). An alternative proposal is that these processing costs arise because talker changes involve salient stimulus-level discontinuities that disrupt auditory attention. Some recent data suggest that multitalker processing costs may be driven by both mechanisms operating over different time scales. Fully evaluating this claim requires a foundational understanding of both talker accommodation and auditory streaming; this article provides a primer on each literature and also reviews several studies that have observed multitalker processing costs. The review closes by underscoring a need for comprehensive theories of speech perception that better integrate auditory attention and by highlighting important considerations for future research in this area.
Topics: Humans; Speech Perception; Speech; Phonetics; Attention
PubMed: 37580454
DOI: 10.3758/s13423-023-02355-6 -
ELife Dec 2023Perceptual decisions about sensory input are influenced by fluctuations in ongoing neural activity, most prominently driven by attention and neuromodulator systems. It...
Perceptual decisions about sensory input are influenced by fluctuations in ongoing neural activity, most prominently driven by attention and neuromodulator systems. It is currently unknown if neuromodulator activity and attention differentially modulate perceptual decision-making and/or whether neuromodulatory systems in fact control attentional processes. To investigate the effects of two distinct neuromodulatory systems and spatial attention on perceptual decisions, we pharmacologically elevated cholinergic (through donepezil) and catecholaminergic (through atomoxetine) levels in humans performing a visuo-spatial attention task, while we measured electroencephalography (EEG). Both attention and catecholaminergic enhancement improved decision-making at the behavioral and algorithmic level, as reflected in increased perceptual sensitivity and the modulation of the drift rate parameter derived from drift diffusion modeling. Univariate analyses of EEG data time-locked to the attentional cue, the target stimulus, and the motor response further revealed that attention and catecholaminergic enhancement both modulated pre-stimulus cortical excitability, cue- and stimulus-evoked sensory activity, as well as parietal evidence accumulation signals. Interestingly, we observed both similar, unique, and interactive effects of attention and catecholaminergic neuromodulation on these behavioral, algorithmic, and neural markers of the decision-making process. Thereby, this study reveals an intricate relationship between attentional and catecholaminergic systems and advances our understanding about how these systems jointly shape various stages of perceptual decision-making.
Topics: Humans; Attention; Electroencephalography; Donepezil; Atomoxetine Hydrochloride; Neurotransmitter Agents; Decision Making
PubMed: 38038722
DOI: 10.7554/eLife.87022