Adaptive allocation of attention during perception, working memory, and decision

感知、工作记忆和决策过程中注意力的适应性分配

• 批准号: 8022733
• 负责人: John T Serences
• 金额: $ 36.45万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2010
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2010-12-15 至 2015-11-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/8022733
• 关键词: Accounting; Affect; Afferent Neurons; Area; Attention; Attention Deficit Disorder; Automobile Driving; Awareness; Ballistics; Behavioral; Binding; Brain region; Cancerous; Clinical; Cognitive; Decision Making; Detection; Development; Diagnosis; Discrimination; Disease; Environment; Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Gatekeeping; Goals; Human; Image; Individual; Individual Differences; Information Theory; Intervention; Knowledge; Learning; Measures; Memory; Methodology; Methods; Modeling; Motion; National Institute of Mental Health; Nature; Neurons; Noise; Pattern; Perception; Performance; Play; Population; Probability; Process; Psychophysiology; Research Proposals; Role; Sampling; Sensory; Shapes; Short-Term Memory; Signal Transduction; Speed; Stimulus; System; Techniques; Testing; Time; Training; Visual Cortex; Visual Fields; Visual system structure; Work; attentional modulation; base; brain behavior; experience; extrastriate visual cortex; heuristics; improved; information processing; insight; neuromechanism; novel; operation; pressure; radiologist; relating to nervous system; response; selective attention; sensory stimulus; sensory system; skills; success; teacher; tool; trait; transmission process; visual search

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Human sensory systems are continuously bombarded with far more input than they can process. As a result, attentional mechanisms have evolved so that available capacity is dedicated to encoding only the most salient and behaviorally relevant stimuli in the environment. In turn, the most important stimuli dominate perceptual awareness and have privileged access to memory stores and to the neural mechanisms that control decisions about how to best interact with external objects. In this proposal, we will use the visual system as a model to understand the basic brain-behavior processes involved in selective attention influence perception, working memory, and the computation of sensorimotor decisions. In addition, we will develop and employ new methods that use fMRI to non-invasively study attentional modulations and the information encoding capacity of sensory systems, in line with the strategic aim of the NIMH to develop novel tools and methodologies for understanding how populations of neural cells work together within and between brain regions. Traditional accounts hold that attention operates to magnify the neural response evoked by important stimuli, which makes a stimulus easier to perceive. This general framework is intuitive, and has been successfully guiding empirical studies for more than three decades. However, recent theoretical work suggests that attention should not simply increase the gain of neurons tuned to a relevant stimulus. Instead, attention should modulate the activity of sensory neurons in a more dynamic manner in order to maximize the probability that a specific perceptual task will be successfully completed. Often times, this counterintuitively requires enhancing the activity of neurons that are most responsive to stimuli that are not physically present in the visual field, because these neurons carry more information about very difficult discriminations between similar items (e.g. when a radiologist searches for a cancerous mass in a low-quality x-ray image). Recent empirical studies support this general framework, and further raise the intriguing possibility that individual differences in the optimality of attention can predict overall performance on difficult discriminations as well as the ability to improve on difficult discriminations with practice (learning). Here, we will critically evaluate this new theoretical perspective, and we will also explore how differences in attention across individuals can influence the precision of short-term memory and the efficiency of simple decision making processes. Collectively, our goal is to provide insights into the operation of attentional mechanisms so that we can more precisely characterize how the system should ideally operate. In turn, this should dramatically improve our ability to isolate specific aspects of attentional processing that can sometimes go awry, thereby enabling more targeted diagnoses and interventions in clinical settings. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Whether listening to a teacher in a classroom or driving a car down the road, the ability to pay attention to important sensory stimuli in the environment is critical to success and survival. In the present research proposal, we will use the visual system as a model to better understand how attention selectively changes the activity of sensory neurons to promote more efficient perception, memory, and decision making. This knowledge will aid in the development of more objective tests for common disorders of attention - such as attention deficit disorder - so that diagnosis can proceed with greater precision and interventions can be started earlier.

描述（由申请人提供）：人类感觉系统不断被轰炸的投入远远超过其处理。结果，注意机制已经发展，因此可用的能力仅专门编码环境中最显着，最相关的刺激。反过来，最重要的刺激占据了感知意识，并具有特权访问记忆店的访问权限以及控制有关如何最好地与外部对象相互作用的决策的神经机制。在此提案中，我们将使用视觉系统作为模型来了解选择性注意力影响感知，工作记忆和感觉运动决策的基本脑行为过程。此外，我们将开发和采用新方法，这些方法使用fMRI非侵入性研究注意调制和感觉系统的信息编码能力，这与NIMH的战略目的开发了新的工具和方法，以理解神经细胞的种群如何在大脑区域之间和之间如何共同工作。 传统的说法认为，注意力可以放大重要刺激引起的神经反应，这使得刺激更容易感知。这个一般框架是直观的，并且已经成功指导实证研究已有三十多年了。但是，最近的理论工作表明，注意力不应简单地增加对相关刺激的神经元的增益。取而代之的是，注意力应以更动态的方式调节感觉神经元的活动，以最大程度地提高特定的感知任务将成功完成的概率。通常，这种违反直觉需要增强对视野中不存在物理上不存在的刺激最有反应的神经元的活性，因为这些神经元提供了更多有关相似项目之间非常困难的区分的信息（例如，当放射科医生在低质X射线图像中搜索癌质量时）。最近的经验研究支持了这一一般框架，并进一步提高了人们的有趣可能性，即注意最佳性的个体差异可以预测困难歧视的总体表现，以及对通过实践（学习）进行困难歧视的能力。在这里，我们将对这种新的理论观点进行批判性评估，我们还将探讨个人关注的差异如何影响短期记忆的精度和简单决策过程的效率。总的来说，我们的目标是提供有关注意机制运作的见解，以便我们可以更精确地表征系统应如何理想地运行。反过来，这应该显着提高我们隔离有时可能会出现注意力处理的特定方面的特定方面的能力，从而在临床环境中实现更多针对性的诊断和干预措施。 公共卫生相关性：无论是在教室里听老师还是在道路上开车，注意环境中重要的感官刺激的能力对于成功和生存至关重要。在本研究建议中，我们将使用视觉系统作为模型，以更好地理解注意力如何选择性地改变感觉神经元的活动以促进更有效的感知，记忆和决策。这些知识将有助于开发针对注意力缺陷障碍的常见疾病的更客观的测试，以便可以更早地开始诊断，并可以较早地开始。