Neuronal Measures of the State of Visual Attention

视觉注意力状态的神经元测量

• 批准号: 8460899
• 负责人: John H.R. Maunsell
• 金额: $ 34.31万
• 依托单位: HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2011-05-01 至 2014-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/8460899
• 关键词: Affect; Afferent Neurons; Attention; Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder; Behavior; Behavior Control; Behavior Disorders; Behavioral; Brain; Cerebral cortex; Cerebral hemisphere; Child; Childhood; Cognitive; Color; Coupled; Cues; Data; Diagnosis; Individual; Instruction; Location; Measurement; Measures; Mediating; Methods; Monitor; Monkeys; Motion; Nervous system structure; Neurons; Performance; Physiological; Population; Population Sizes; Psychometrics; Psychophysics; Relative (related person); Research; Resources; Response to stimulus physiology; Rewards; Sensory; Series; Signal Transduction; Specific qualifier value; Stimulus; Time; United States; V4 neuron; Visual; Visual Cortex; Visual Fields; Visual attention; area V4; base; experience; improved; insight; neurophysiology; novel; physical separation; public health relevance; research study; response; retinotopic; shared attention; theories; tool; visual performance; visual process; visual processing; visual stimulus

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Virtually all studies of the neuronal mechanisms that underlie attention compare average brain activity when subjects are asked to attend to different objects, locations or features. Implicit in this approach is the assumption that a subject's state of attention remains relatively constant when they follow a given instruction. Yet anyone who has performed an attention-demanding task knows that attention can drift rapidly and widely. Experimenters can specify attentional conditions precisely, but have limited and indirect influence on a subject's actual attentional state on a given experimental trial. This is an important limitation, because fluctuations in attention can systematically affect estimates of how attention influences neuronal activity and behavioral ability. Assessing the actual attentional state of a subject at a given moment has not been easy to accomplish. However, in recent experiments we have discovered that appropriate analysis of the signals from populations of individual neurons recorded simultaneously in visual cerebral cortex can provide a precise measure of current attentional state. These measurements confirm that attention fluctuates widely even when instructions, stimuli and rewards are fixed. Moreover, they reveal that these fluctuations in attention are associated with profound differences in behavioral performance within fixed experimental situations. The ability to measure attentional state within individual trials provides a powerful tool for exploring how attention affects sensory signals and behavioral performance. We propose experiments that will exploit this novel method to explore questions about the neuronal basis of visual attention that have previously been inaccessible. Our first specific aim is to use simultaneous recordings from different populations of individual V4 neurons to determine whether the control of attention at different retinotopic representations is coordinated or independent. Our second specific aim involves analogous experiments that will provide direct measurements of whether neuronal control of spatial and feature attention is coupled. The final specific aim is to measure attentional state as a function of time within trials to compare the dynamics of stimulus responses with those of attentional shifts produced by exogenous or endogenous cues and those of the behavioral consequences of the attention shifts. Collectively, these experiments will provide new insights into the mechanisms that allocate attention to different visual stimuli and how the neuronal modulations they cause improve behavioral performance.

描述（由申请人提供）：几乎所有研究神经元机制的研究，这些研究是构成关注的所有研究，以比较当受试者参加不同对象，位置或特征时的平均大脑活动。这种方法中隐含的假设是，当受试者遵循给定的指示时，他们的关注状态仍然相对稳定。然而，任何执行关注任务的人都知道，注意力可以迅速而广泛地漂移。实验者可以精确地指定注意力条件，但在给定的实验试验中对受试者的实际注意力状态的影响有限和间接影响。这是一个重要的局限性，因为注意力的波动可以系统地影响注意力影响神经元活动和行为能力的估计。在给定时刻评估受试者的实际注意力状态并不容易完成。但是，在最近的实验中，我们发现对在视觉大脑皮层中同时记录的单个神经元的信号的适当分析可以提供当前注意状态的精确度量。这些测量结果证实，即使固定了指令，刺激和奖励，注意力也会广泛波动。此外，他们揭示了这些注意力中的这些波动与固定实验情况下的行为绩效差异有关。在单个试验中衡量注意状态的能力为探索注意力如何影响感觉信号和行为表现的功能提供了强大的工具。我们提出的实验将利用这种新颖的方法来探讨有关以前无法访问的视觉注意的神经元基础的问题。我们的第一个具体目的是使用来自单个V4神经元不同种群的同时记录来确定在不同的视网膜表示处的关注是协调的还是独立的。我们的第二个特定目的涉及类似的实验，这些实验将直接测量空间和特征注意的神经元控制。最终的具体目的是测量注意状态在试验中的时间函数，以将刺激反应的动力学与外源性或内源性线索以及注意力转移行为后果产生的注意力转移的动力学进行比较。总的来说，这些实验将为分配注意不同视觉刺激的机制以及它们引起的神经元调制如何改善行为性能的机制提供新的见解。