Increased attention enhances both behavioral and neuronal performance

Science ◽  
1988 ◽  
Vol 240 (4850) ◽  
pp. 338-340 ◽  
Author(s):  
H Spitzer ◽  
R Desimone ◽  
J Moran
Keyword(s):  
Visual Discrimination ◽  
Rhesus Monkeys ◽  
Cortical Area ◽  
Task Difficulty ◽  
Discrimination Task ◽  
Control Experiment ◽  
Single Cells ◽  
Neuronal Responses ◽  
Area V4 ◽  
Behavioral Evidence

Single cells were recorded from cortical area V4 of two rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) trained on a visual discrimination task with two levels of difficulty. Behavioral evidence indicated that the monkeys' discriminative abilities improved when the task was made more difficult. Correspondingly, neuronal responses to stimuli became larger and more selective in the difficult task. A control experiment demonstrated that changes in general arousal could not account for the effects of task difficulty on neuronal responses. It is concluded that increasing the amount of attention directed toward a stimulus can enhance the responsiveness and selectivity of the neurons that process it.

Attention to Both Space and Feature Modulates Neuronal Responses in Macaque Area V4

2000 ◽  
Vol 83 (3) ◽  
pp. 1751-1755 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carrie J. McAdams ◽  
John H. R. Maunsell
Keyword(s):  
Rhesus Monkeys ◽  
Cortical Area ◽  
Neuronal Response ◽  
Spatial Location ◽  
Neuronal Responses ◽  
Directed Attention ◽  
Macaque Monkeys ◽  
Area V4 ◽  
Electrophysiological Studies ◽  
Psychological Experiments

Attention is the mechanism with which we select specific aspects of our environment for processing. Psychological experiments have shown that attention can be directed to a spatial location or to a particular object. Electrophysiological studies in trained macaque monkeys have found that attention can strengthen the responses of neurons in cortical area V4. Some of these studies have attributed these effects to spatial attention, whereas others have suggested that feature-directed attention may modulate the neuronal response. Here we report that neuronal correlates for both spatial and feature-directed attention exist in individual neurons in area V4 of behaving rhesus monkeys.

scholarly journals Effects of Task Difficulty and Target Likelihood in Area V4 of Macaque Monkeys

2006 ◽  
Vol 96 (5) ◽  
pp. 2377-2387 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Elizabeth Boudreau ◽  
Tori H. Williford ◽  
John H. R. Maunsell
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Attention ◽  
Cortical Neurons ◽  
Task Difficulty ◽  
Focus Of Attention ◽  
Behavioral Performance ◽  
Neuronal Responses ◽  
Fixed Amount ◽  
Processing Resource ◽  
Area V4 ◽  
Sensory Responses

Spatial attention improves performance at attended locations and correspondingly modulates firing rates of cortical neurons. The size of these behavioral and neuronal effects depends on the difficulty of the task performed at the attended location. Psychological theorists have attributed this to a tighter focus of a fixed amount of processing resource at the attended location, but the effects of task difficulty on the distribution of neuronal effects of attention across the visual field have not been fully explored. We trained rhesus monkeys to do a detection task in which difficulty and spatial attention were manipulated independently. Probe stimuli were used to measure behavioral performance in different conditions of attention and difficulty. Animals performed better at attended locations and this advantage increased with difficulty, consistent with data from human psychophysics. Neuronal modulation by spatial attention was larger with greater difficulty. In two animals, increasing difficulty caused a modest increase in neuronal responses to visual stimuli regardless of the locus of spatial attention. In a third animal, which was previously trained to ignore multiple distracting stimuli, increasing task difficulty increased responses at the focus of attention and suppressed responses away from the focus of attention. The results show that difficulty can modulate effects of spatial attention in V4; it can alter the distribution of sensory responses across the visual scene in ways that may depend on the subject's behavioral strategy.

scholarly journals Analysing neuronal correlates of the comparison of two sequentially presented sensory stimuli

2002 ◽  
Vol 357 (1428) ◽  
pp. 1843-1850 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos D. Brody ◽  
Adrián Hernández ◽  
Antonio Zainos ◽  
Luis Lemus ◽  
Ranulfo Romo
Keyword(s):  
Macaca Mulatta ◽  
Cortical Area ◽  
Discrimination Task ◽  
Memory Trace ◽  
Sensory Stimulus ◽  
Neuronal Responses ◽  
Sensory Stimuli ◽  
Sensory Discrimination ◽  
Cortical Areas ◽  
Highly Correlated

In a typical sequential sensory discrimination task, subjects are required to make a decision based on comparing a sensory stimulus against the memory trace left by a previous stimulus. What is the neuronal substrate for such comparisons and the resulting decisions? This question was studied by recording neuronal responses in a variety of cortical areas of awake monkeys ( Macaca mulatta ), trained to carry out a vibrotactile sequential discrimination task. We describe methods to analyse responses obtained during the comparison and decision phases of the task, and describe the resulting findings from recordings in secondary somatosensory cortical area (S2). A subset of neurons in S2 become highly correlated with the monkey's decision in the task.

Cortical area V4 is critical for certain texture discriminations, but this effect is not dependent on attention

2000 ◽  
Vol 17 (6) ◽  
pp. 949-958 ◽  
Author(s):  
WILLIAM H. MERIGAN
Keyword(s):  
Visual Field ◽  
Cortical Area ◽  
Control Experiment ◽  
Line Element ◽  
Peripheral Vision ◽  
Extended Period ◽  
Single Element ◽  
Area V4 ◽  
Neuronal Interactions ◽  
Visual Crowding

This study examined the question of which features of a complex grouping discrimination make it vulnerable to permanent elimination by V4 lesions. We first verified that the line element grouping discrimination, which we previously reported to be devastated by V4 lesions, was similarly affected in the monkeys of this study. The permanence of the deficit was established by mapping its visual field distribution and then testing this discrimination for an extended period at a locus on the border of the deficit. Also, a staircase procedure was used to provide the monkey with within session instruction in the grouping discrimination, but this did not improve V4 lesion performance. Grouping was then compared with several discriminations that shared some features with it, but which were found not to be permanently eliminated by V4 lesions. This comparison suggested that grouping (rather than segmentation or response to a single element) was one feature that made the discrimination vulnerable, a second was the similarity in shape of the texture elements to be grouped. Finally, we tested visual crowding, a property of peripheral vision that is thought to reflect neuronal interactions early in visual cortex, possibly in area V1, and found no effect of V4 lesions. A control experiment with human observers tested whether the elimination of grouping by V4 lesions might be due to an alteration of attention, but found no evidence to support this hypothesis. These results show that severe disruption of texture discriminations by V4 lesions depends on both the nature of the discrimination and the type of texture elements involved, but does not necessarily involve the disruption of attention.

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