Responses to Task-Irrelevant Visual Features by Primate Prefrontal Neurons

2001 ◽  
Vol 86 (4) ◽  
pp. 2001-2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johan Lauwereyns ◽  
Masamichi Sakagami ◽  
Ken-Ichiro Tsutsui ◽  
Shunsuke Kobayashi ◽  
Masashi Koizumi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Visual Target ◽  
Color Discrimination ◽  
Irrelevant Information ◽  
Visual Features ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
Motion Direction ◽  
Color Feature ◽  
Motion Feature ◽  
Irrelevant Feature ◽  
Task Irrelevant

The primate brain is equipped with prefrontal circuits for interpreting visual information, but how these circuits deal with competing stimulus-response (S-R) associations remains unknown. Here we show different types of responses to task-irrelevant visual features in three functionally dissociated groups of primate prefrontal neurons. Two Japanese macaques participated in a go/no-go task in which they had to discriminate either the color or the motion direction of a visual target to make a correct manual response. Prior to the experiment, the monkeys had been trained extensively so that they acquired fixed associations between visual features and required responses (e.g., “green = go”; “downward motion = no-go”). In this design, the monkey was confronted with a visual target from which it had to extract relevant information (e.g., color in the color-discrimination condition) while ignoring irrelevant information (e.g., motion direction in the color-discrimination condition). We recorded from 436 task-related prefrontal neurons while the monkey performed the multidimensional go/no-go task: 139 (32%) neurons showed go/no-go discrimination based on color as well as motion direction (“integration cells”); 192 neurons (44%) showed go/no-go discrimination only based on color (“color-feature cells”); and 105 neurons (24%) showed go/no-go discrimination only based on motion direction (“motion-feature cells”). Overall, however, 162 neurons (37%) were influenced by irrelevant information: 53 neurons (38%) among integration cells, 71 neurons (37%) among color-feature cells, and 38 neurons (36%) among motion-feature cells. Across all types of neurons, the response to an irrelevant feature was positively correlated with the response to the same feature when it was relevant, indicating that the influence from irrelevant information is a residual from S-R associations that are relevant in a different context. Temporal and anatomical differences among integration, color-feature and motion-feature cells suggested a sequential mode of information processing in prefrontal cortex, with integration cells situated toward the output of the decision-making process. In these cells, the response to irrelevant information appears as a congruency effect, with better go/no-go discrimination when both the relevant and irrelevant feature are associated with the same response than when they are associated with different responses. This congruency effect could be the result of the combined input from color- and motion-feature cells. Thus these data suggest that irrelevant features lead to partial activation of neurons even toward the output of the decision-making process in primate prefrontal cortex.

scholarly journals A bimodal extension of the Eriksen flanker task

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rolf Ulrich ◽  
Laura Prislan ◽  
Jeff Miller
Keyword(s):  
Visual Target ◽  
Target Item ◽  
Flanker Task ◽  
Response Competition ◽  
Relevant Information ◽  
Irrelevant Information ◽  
Flanker Effect ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Visual Targets ◽  
Task Irrelevant

Abstract The Eriksen flanker task is a traditional conflict paradigm for studying the influence of task-irrelevant information on the processing of task-relevant information. In this task, participants are asked to respond to a visual target item (e.g., a letter) that is flanked by task-irrelevant items (e.g., also letters). Responses are typically faster and more accurate when the task-irrelevant information is response-congruent with the visual target than when it is incongruent. Several researchers have attributed the starting point of this flanker effect to poor selective filtering at a perceptual level (e.g., spotlight models), which subsequently produces response competition at post-perceptual stages. The present study examined whether a flanker-like effect could also be established within a bimodal analog of the flanker task with auditory irrelevant letters and visual target letters, which must be processed along different processing routes. The results of two experiments revealed that a flanker-like effect is also present with bimodal stimuli. In contrast to the unimodal flanker task, however, the effect only emerged when flankers and targets shared the same letter name, but not when they were different letters mapped onto the same response. We conclude that the auditory flankers can influence the time needed to recognize visual targets but do not directly activate their associated responses.

Feature-based attention is not confined by object boundaries: spatially global enhancement of irrelevant features

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angus F. Chapman ◽  
Viola S. Störmer
Keyword(s):  
Visual Field ◽  
Visual Features ◽  
Motion Direction ◽  
Detection Rates ◽  
The Core ◽  
Unit Of Selection ◽  
Object Based ◽  
Feature Based ◽  
Task Irrelevant ◽  
Object Features

Theories of visual attention differ in what they define as the core unit of selection. Feature-based theories emphasize the importance of visual features (e.g., color, size, motion), demonstrated through enhancement of attended features across the visual field, while object-based theories propose that attention enhances all features belonging to the same object. Here we test how within-object enhancement of features interacts with spatially global effects of feature-based attention. Participants attended a set of colored dots (moving coherently upwards or downwards) to detect brief luminance decreases, while simultaneously detecting speed changes in another set of dots in the opposite visual field. Participants had higher speed detection rates for the dot array that matched the motion direction of the attended color array, although motion direction was entirely task-irrelevant. This effect persisted even when it was detrimental for task performance. Overall, these results indicate that task-irrelevant object features are enhanced globally, surpassing object boundaries.

scholarly journals Distraction biases working memory for faces

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Remington Mallett ◽  
Anurima Mummaneni ◽  
Jarrod Lewis-Peacock
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Irrelevant Information ◽  
Visual Features ◽  
Maintenance Period ◽  
Stimulus Space ◽  
Estimation Task ◽  
Low Level ◽  
The Face ◽  
High Level ◽  
Task Irrelevant

Working memory persists in the face of distraction, yet not without consequence. Previous research has shown that memory for low-level visual features is systematically influenced by the maintenance or presentation of a similar distractor stimulus. Responses are frequently biased in stimulus space towards a perceptual distractor, though this has yet to be determined for high-level stimuli. We investigated whether these influences are shared for complex visual stimuli such as faces. To quantify response accuracies for these stimuli, we used a delayed-estimation task with a computer-generated “face space” consisting of eighty faces that varied continuously as a function of age and sex. In a set of three experiments, we found that responses for a target face held in working memory were biased towards a distractor face presented during the maintenance period. The amount of response bias did not vary as a function of distance between target and distractor. Our data suggest that, similar to low-level visual features, high-level face representations in working memory are biased by the processing of related but task-irrelevant information.

scholarly journals Age-related differences in the neural bases of phonological and semantic processes in the context of task-irrelevant information

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 829-844 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michele T. Diaz ◽  
Micah A. Johnson ◽  
Deborah M. Burke ◽  
Trong-Kha Truong ◽  
David J. Madden
Keyword(s):  
Irrelevant Information ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Neural Bases ◽  
Task Irrelevant ◽  
Semantic Processes

Inhibition of Steady-State Smooth Pursuit and Catch-Up Saccades by Abrupt Visual and Auditory Onsets

2010 ◽  
Vol 104 (5) ◽  
pp. 2573-2585 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dirk Kerzel ◽  
Sabine Born ◽  
David Souto
Keyword(s):  
Steady State ◽  
Inhibitory Effect ◽  
Stimulus Onset ◽  
Subcortical Structures ◽  
Motion Direction ◽  
Irrelevant Sound ◽  
Long Latency ◽  
Catch Up ◽  
Task Irrelevant ◽  
Pursuit Gain

It is known that visual transients prolong saccadic latency and reduce saccadic frequency. The latter effect was attributed to subcortical structures because it occurred only 60–70 ms after stimulus onset. We examined the effects of large task-irrelevant transients on steady-state pursuit and the generation of catch-up saccades. Two screen-wide stripes of equal contrast (4, 20, or 100%) were briefly flashed at equal eccentricities (3, 6, or 12°) from the pursuit target. About 100 ms after flash onset, we observed that pursuit gain dropped by 6–12% and catch-up saccades were entirely suppressed. The relatively long latency of the inhibition suggests that it results from cortical mechanisms that may act by promoting fixation or the deployment of attention over the visual field. In addition, we show that a loud irrelevant sound is able to generate the same inhibition of saccades as visual transients, whereas it only induces a weak modulation of pursuit gain, indicating a privileged access of acoustic information to the saccadic system. Finally, irrelevant changes in motion direction orthogonal to pursuit had a smaller and later inhibitory effect.

scholarly journals Sequential sensory and decision processing in posterior parietal cortex

eLife ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guilhem Ibos ◽  
David J Freedman
Keyword(s):  
Parietal Cortex ◽  
Posterior Parietal Cortex ◽  
Sensory Information ◽  
Matching Task ◽  
Visual Features ◽  
Motion Direction ◽  
Sensory Stimuli ◽  
Cortex Area ◽  
Visual Matching ◽  
Posterior Parietal

Decisions about the behavioral significance of sensory stimuli often require comparing sensory inference of what we are looking at to internal models of what we are looking for. Here, we test how neuronal selectivity for visual features is transformed into decision-related signals in posterior parietal cortex (area LIP). Monkeys performed a visual matching task that required them to detect target stimuli composed of conjunctions of color and motion-direction. Neuronal recordings from area LIP revealed two main findings. First, the sequential processing of visual features and the selection of target-stimuli suggest that LIP is involved in transforming sensory information into decision-related signals. Second, the patterns of color and motion selectivity and their impact on decision-related encoding suggest that LIP plays a role in detecting target stimuli by comparing bottom-up sensory inputs (what the monkeys were looking at) and top-down cognitive encoding inputs (what the monkeys were looking for).

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