Affiliation:
1. Department of Psychology, Stanford University
Abstract
Attention allows us to focus sensory processing on behaviorally relevant aspects of the visual world. One potential mechanism of attention is a change in the gain of sensory responses. However, changing gain at early stages could have multiple downstream consequences for visual processing. Which, if any, of these effects can account for the benefits of attention for detection and discrimination? Using a model of primate visual cortex we document how a Gaussian-shaped gain modulation results in changes to spatial tuning properties. Forcing the model to use only these changes failed to produce any benefit in task performance. Instead, we found that gain alone was both necessary and sufficient to explain category detection and discrimination during attention. Our results show how gain can give rise to changes in receptive fields which are not necessary for enhancing task performance.
Funder
Washington Research Foundation
Research to Prevent Blindness
Lions Clubs International Foundation
Hellman Fellows Fund
National Eye Institute
Publisher
eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd
Subject
General Immunology and Microbiology,General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology,General Medicine,General Neuroscience
Cited by
4 articles.
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