Attentional modulation of the processing and perception of visual motion

Attentional modulation of the processing and perception of visual motion S Treue
German Primate Center, Goettingen; Faculty of Biology and Psychology, Goettingen University; Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, Goettingen, Germany
Our senses provide much more information to the central nervous system than can be adequately processed. We use attention as a powerful mechanism for shaping cortical information processing to reflect the current relative behavioral relevance of the various pieces of incoming information. One prominent neurophysiological effect of allocating attention is the modulation of neuronal responses in sensory cortex. Studying this modulation in area MT, a particularly well understood sensory area of primate visual cortex, has revealed a wealth of information about the neural correlates of visual attention. I will present experimental findings focusing on the influence of spatial and feature-based attention in areas MT and MST. The attentional modulation appears to have a multiplicative influence on neural responses, but it is still able to create non-multiplicative changes in receptive field profiles and population responses. These physiological effects are well matched to perceptual consequences of allocating attention, namely an enhanced perception of attended objects and aspects at the expense of an accurate representation of visual information and of the perceptual strength of unattended portions of the visual input.

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