Sloan-Swartz Summer Meeting 2007 Attentional modulation of feature selectivity in area V4 James Mazer Department of Neurobiology Yale School of Medicine Sloan-Swartz Summer Meeting 2007
What is feature attention? Feature-based attention: attention directed towards a particular value along some stimulus dimension in contrast to... attention to a particular region of space (space-based) attention to a particular visual “channel” or feature dimension
Why study feature attention? natural visual environments are cluttered during natural vision we often know what we want, even when we don’t know where it is feature attention, like spatial attention, can provide some resolution of limited neural bandwidth or capacity problems
How do we study feature attention? Where’s Waldo? Visual Search
Extrastriate area V4 IT V4 V1 V2
Salience maps & visual search IT/PFC V4 LGN V1 V2
Salience maps & visual search IT/PFC V4 oculomotor LGN V1 V2
Feeviewing visual search task non-match (2-5s) hold bar sample (2-4s) grab bar delay (2-4s) hold bar match (2-5s) release bar
Feeviewing visual search task
Freeviewing visual search behavior
Modeling attentional effects response baseline gain tuning shift passive response stimulus dimension
Freeviewing reverse correlation single fixation eye position eye velocity spikes time
Freeviewing reverse correlation stimulus waveform + spikes …
Modeling attentional effects response baseline gain tuning shift passive response stimulus dimension
Freeviewing: summary of modulatory effects no modulation 15% D baseline 30% D gain 49% D shape 30% n=105
Freevewing: summary of modulatory effects pure Dshape 2% 5% 6% no modulation 15% 17% 30% 9% 17% pure Dgain pure Dbaseline n=105
Freeviewing reverse correlation tuning spatial frequency domain m0067 STRF proj’d into stim PCA space
Tuning shift: matched filter search target tuning A spatial domain spatial frequency domain spatial frequency domain m0067 STRF proj’d into stim PCA space
Tuning shift: matched filter search target tuning A B C D spatial domain spatial frequency domain spatial frequency domain m0067 STRF proj’d into stim PCA space
Tuning shift: unknown relationship to target
Summary feature attention can alter (1) mean rate, (2) gain and (3) preferred stimuli in V4 baseline, gain and selectivity modulations occur in all possible combinations preference changes could facilitate target detection during visual search (but it’s not a simple matched filter). maximal tuning modulation occurs in neurons with broadest orientation tuning
Acknowledgements Gallant Lab (UCB) Jon Touryan Monica Cano Vinas Julie Golomb Matt Krause Xiao-Jing Wang Gallant Lab (UCB) Stephen David