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Related Experiment Video

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Measuring Attention and Visual Processing Speed by Model-based Analysis of Temporal-order Judgments

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Neural representation of object-specific attentional priority.

¹Department of Psychology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA; Neuroscience Program, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA.

|January 31, 2016

Summary

Researchers investigated how the brain prioritizes objects during visual attention. They found that specific brain regions, including the anterior intraparietal sulcus, can represent attentional priority for objects regardless of their features or location.

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Area of Science:

Cognitive Neuroscience
Visual Attention Research

Background:

Humans exhibit flexible attentional control, prioritizing specific locations, features, or objects in visual scenes.
Isolating object-based attention is challenging due to the inherent link between objects and their constituent features and locations.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the neural representation of attentional priority in a paradigm specifically designed to isolate object-based selection.
To determine if abstract, high-level objects can be represented by neural activity independent of their specific locations and features.

Main Methods:

Utilized functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure brain activity.
Employed multi-voxel pattern analysis (MVPA) to decode neural patterns.
Designed a novel paradigm with superimposed, perceptually varying gratings to isolate object-based attention.

Main Results:

Successfully decoded the attended grating using fMRI data.
Identified attentional priority representation in frontoparietal areas, including anterior intraparietal sulcus (IPS), frontal eye field (FEF), and inferior frontal junction (IFJ).
Demonstrated that patterned neural activity in these areas encodes attentional priority for a perceptually varying object.

Conclusions:

Frontoparietal areas, specifically anterior IPS, FEF, and IFJ, can encode attentional priority for abstract objects.
This neural encoding is independent of the objects' specific locations and continuously changing features.
The findings support the existence of object-based attentional selection mechanisms in the brain.