scholarly journals Efficient allocation of attentional sensitivity gain in visual cortex reduces foveal sensitivity in visual search

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Calen Walshe ◽  
Wilson S. Geisler
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cortex ◽  
Visual Search ◽  
Efficient Allocation ◽  
Sensitivity Gain ◽  
Foveal Sensitivity

scholarly journals Visual search for object categories is predicted by the representational architecture of high-level visual cortex

2017 ◽  
Vol 117 (1) ◽  
pp. 388-402 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael A. Cohen ◽  
George A. Alvarez ◽  
Ken Nakayama ◽  
Talia Konkle
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cortex ◽  
Visual Search ◽  
Visual System ◽  
Visual Processing ◽  
Search Task ◽  
Visual Search Task ◽  
Visual Object ◽  
Neural Responses ◽  
Object Categories ◽  
High Level

Visual search is a ubiquitous visual behavior, and efficient search is essential for survival. Different cognitive models have explained the speed and accuracy of search based either on the dynamics of attention or on similarity of item representations. Here, we examined the extent to which performance on a visual search task can be predicted from the stable representational architecture of the visual system, independent of attentional dynamics. Participants performed a visual search task with 28 conditions reflecting different pairs of categories (e.g., searching for a face among cars, body among hammers, etc.). The time it took participants to find the target item varied as a function of category combination. In a separate group of participants, we measured the neural responses to these object categories when items were presented in isolation. Using representational similarity analysis, we then examined whether the similarity of neural responses across different subdivisions of the visual system had the requisite structure needed to predict visual search performance. Overall, we found strong brain/behavior correlations across most of the higher-level visual system, including both the ventral and dorsal pathways when considering both macroscale sectors as well as smaller mesoscale regions. These results suggest that visual search for real-world object categories is well predicted by the stable, task-independent architecture of the visual system. NEW & NOTEWORTHY Here, we ask which neural regions have neural response patterns that correlate with behavioral performance in a visual processing task. We found that the representational structure across all of high-level visual cortex has the requisite structure to predict behavior. Furthermore, when directly comparing different neural regions, we found that they all had highly similar category-level representational structures. These results point to a ubiquitous and uniform representational structure in high-level visual cortex underlying visual object processing.

scholarly journals Periodic involvement of early visual cortex during attentional visual search: a TMS study

2012 ◽  
Vol 12 (9) ◽  
pp. 268-268
Author(s):  
L. Dugue ◽  
P. Marque ◽  
R. VanRullen
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cortex ◽  
Visual Search ◽  
Early Visual Cortex

scholarly journals Learning visual search: increased retinotopic response to target vs. distractors in early visual cortex

2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (12) ◽  
pp. 962
Author(s):  
Sebastian Frank ◽  
Eric Reavis ◽  
Mark Greenlee ◽  
Peter Tse
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cortex ◽  
Visual Search ◽  
Early Visual Cortex

Lesion of Primary Visual Cortex in Monkey Impairs the Inhibitory but Not the Facilitatory Cueing Effect on Saccade

2011 ◽  
Vol 23 (5) ◽  
pp. 1160-1169 ◽  
Author(s):  
Takuro Ikeda ◽  
Masatoshi Yoshida ◽  
Tadashi Isa
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cortex ◽  
Visual Search ◽  
Primary Visual Cortex ◽  
Direct Evidence ◽  
Stimulus Presentation ◽  
Visual Pathway ◽  
Inhibitory Effect ◽  
Facilitatory Effect ◽  
Cueing Effect ◽  
Visual Cortices

Prior visual stimulus presentation induces immediate facilitation and subsequent inhibition of orienting to an ensuing target at the same location. Recent studies revealed that the superior colliculus (SC) is involved in these facilitatory and inhibitory cueing effects on saccade; however, as the SC receives inputs both directly from the retina (retino-tectal pathway) and indirectly from visual cortices (geniculostriate pathway), it is unclear which visual pathway contributes to the effects. We investigated this issue using monkeys with lesions in the primary visual cortex (V1), thus depriving the SC of the geniculostriate pathway and leaving the retino-tectal pathway intact. We found that the inhibitory cueing effect was selectively impaired and the facilitatory cueing effect was spared after V1 lesions. The results suggest that the geniculostriate and the retino-tectal pathways are differentially involved in the generation of cueing effects on saccade: The former is critically involved in the inhibitory effect whereas the latter alone can induce the facilitatory effect. The results provide the first direct evidence for the involvement of the geniculostriate pathway in the inhibitory cueing effect and further imply that the more recent evolution of the geniculostriate pathway in higher mammals improves the efficiency of visual search by inhibiting orienting to a previously attended location.

scholarly journals Parallel fast and slow recurrent cortical processing mediates target and distractor selection in visual search

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah E. Donohue ◽  
Mircea A. Schoenfeld ◽  
Jens-Max Hopf
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cortex ◽  
Visual Search ◽  
Electric Fields ◽  
Neural Correlates ◽  
Opposite Polarity ◽  
Exact Nature ◽  
Behavioral Performance ◽  
Distractor Processing ◽  
Reentrant Processing

AbstractVisual search has been commonly used to study the neural correlates of attentional allocation in space. Recent electrophysiological research has disentangled distractor processing from target processing, showing that these mechanisms appear to operate in parallel and show electric fields of opposite polarity. Nevertheless, the localization and exact nature of this activity is unknown. Here, using MEG in humans, we provide a spatiotemporal characterization of target and distractor processing in visual cortex. We demonstrate that source activity underlying target- and distractor-processing propagates in parallel as fast and slow sweep from higher to lower hierarchical levels in visual cortex. Importantly, the fast propagating target-related source activity bypasses intermediate levels to go directly to V1, and this V1 activity correlates with behavioral performance. These findings suggest that reentrant processing is important for both selection and attenuation of stimuli, and such processing operates in parallel feedback loops.

scholarly journals Functional Connectivity Between Superior Parietal Lobule and Primary Visual Cortex “at Rest” Predicts Visual Search Efficiency

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (8) ◽  
pp. 517-526 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisenda Bueichekú ◽  
Noelia Ventura-Campos ◽  
María-Ángeles Palomar-García ◽  
Anna Miró-Padilla ◽  
María-Antonia Parcet ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cortex ◽  
Visual Search ◽  
Functional Connectivity ◽  
Primary Visual Cortex ◽  
Search Efficiency ◽  
Superior Parietal Lobule ◽  
Parietal Lobule

scholarly journals Visual Attention in The Fovea and The Periphery during Visual Search

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jie Zhang ◽  
Xiaocang Zhu ◽  
Shanshan Wang ◽  
Hossein Esteky ◽  
Yonghong Tian ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cortex ◽  
Visual Search ◽  
Visual Field ◽  
Visual Attention ◽  
Search Task ◽  
Visual Search Task ◽  
Common View ◽  
Serial Process ◽  
Feature Attention ◽  
Task Feature

Visual search depends on both the foveal and peripheral visual system, yet the foveal attention mechanisms is still lack of insights. We simultaneously recorded the foveal and peripheral activities in V4, IT and LPFC, while monkeys performed a category-based visual search task. Feature attention enhanced responses of Face-selective, House-selective, and Non-selective foveal cells in visual cortex. While foveal attention effects appeared no matter the peripheral attention effects, paying attention to the foveal stimulus dissipated the peripheral feature attentional effects, and delayed the peripheral spatial attentional effects. When target features appeared both in the foveal and the peripheral, feature attention effects seemed to occur predominately in the foveal, which might not distribute across the visual field according to common view of distributed feature attention effects. As a result, the parallel attentive process seemed to occur during distractor fixations, while the serial process predominated during target fixations in visual search.

scholarly journals Animacy and object size are reflected in perceptual similarity computations by the preschool years

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bria Long ◽  
Mariko Moher ◽  
Susan Carey ◽  
Talia Konkle
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cortex ◽  
Visual Search ◽  
Real World ◽  
Cognitive Architecture ◽  
Object Size ◽  
Search Performance ◽  
Perceptual Similarity ◽  
Neural Responses ◽  
Neural Organization ◽  
Perceptual Representations

By adulthood, animacy and object size jointly structure neural responses in visual cortex and influence perceptual similarity computations. Here, we take a first step in asking about the development of these aspects of cognitive architecture by probing whether animacy and object size are reflected in perceptual similarity computations by the preschool years. We used visual search performance as an index of perceptual similarity, as research with adults suggests search is slower when distractors are perceptually similar to the target. Preschoolers found target pictures more quickly when targets differed from distractor pictures in either animacy (Experiment 1) or in real-world size (Experiment 2; the pictures themselves were all the same size), versus when they do not. Taken together, these results suggest that the visual system has abstracted perceptual features for animates vs. inanimates and big vs. small objects as classes by the preschool years and call for further research exploring the development of these perceptual representations and their consequences for neural organization in childhood.

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