A model of selective visual attention predicts biased competition and information routing D Harnack, K Pawelzik, U A Ernst |
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Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Bremen, Germany
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| Selective visual attention allows to focus on relevant information, and to ignore distracting features of a visual scene. These principles of information processing are reflected in response properties of neurons in visual area V4: If a neuron is presented with two stimuli in its receptive field, and one is attended, the neuron responds as if the non-attended stimulus was absent (biased competition). In addition, when the luminances of the two stimuli are temporally and independently modulated, local field potentials are correlated with the modulation of the attended stimulus, but not with the non-attended stimulus (information routing) [Rotermund et al., SfN Annual Meeting 2011, #221.05]. In order to explain these results in one coherent framework, we present a two-layer spiking cortical network model with lateral connectivity and converging feed-forward connections. When driven near the oscillatory regime, it reproduces both experimental observations. Hereby, lateral inhibition and shift of the relative phases between sending and receiving layers (communication through coherence, CTC) are identified as the main mechanisms underlying biased competition and selective routing. Our model predicts a sharpening of the distribution of relative phases together with a positive phase shift of ~90 degrees if the stimulus processed by the sending layer is attended. |
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