Modeling the Modulatory Effect of Attention on Human Spatial Vision. Itti, L., Braun, J., & Koch, C. In Dietterich, T. G., Becker, S., & Ghahramani, Z., editors, Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS*2001), Vol. 14, pages 1247-1254, Cambridge, MA, Aug, 2002. MIT Press.
abstract   bibtex   
We present new simulation results, in which a computational model of interacting visual neurons simultaneously predicts the modulation of spatial vision thresholds by focal visual attention, for five dual-task human psychophysics experiments. This new study complements our previous findings that attention activates a winner-take-all competition among early visual neurons within one cortical hypercolumn. This "intensified competition" hypothesis assumed that attention equally affects all neurons, and yielded two single-unit predictions: an increase in gain and a sharpening of tuning with attention. While both effects have been separately observed in electrophysiology, no single-unit study has yet shown them simultaneously. Hence, we here explore whether our model could still predict our data if attention might only modulate neuronal gain, but do so non-uniformly across neurons and tasks. Specifically, we investigate whether modulating the gain of only the neurons that are loudest, best-tuned, or most informative about the stimulus, or of all neurons equally but in a task-dependent manner, may account for the data. We find that none of these hypotheses yields predictions as plausible as the intensified competition hypothesis, hence providing additional support for our original findings.
@inproceedings{ Itti_etal02nips,
  title = {Modeling the Modulatory Effect of Attention on Human Spatial Vision},
  author = {L. Itti and J. Braun and C. Koch},
  abstract = {We present new simulation results, in which a computational model of
  interacting visual neurons simultaneously predicts the modulation of
  spatial vision thresholds by focal visual attention, for five
  dual-task human psychophysics experiments. This new study
  complements our previous findings that attention activates a
  winner-take-all competition among early visual neurons within one
  cortical hypercolumn.  This "intensified competition" hypothesis
  assumed that attention equally affects all neurons, and yielded two
  single-unit predictions: an increase in gain and a sharpening of
  tuning with attention. While both effects have been separately
  observed in electrophysiology, no single-unit study has yet shown
  them simultaneously.  Hence, we here explore whether our model could
  still predict our data if attention might only modulate neuronal
  gain, but do so non-uniformly across neurons and tasks.
  Specifically, we investigate whether modulating the gain of only the
  neurons that are loudest, best-tuned, or most informative about the
  stimulus, or of all neurons equally but in a task-dependent manner,
  may account for the data.  We find that none of these hypotheses
  yields predictions as plausible as the intensified competition
  hypothesis, hence providing additional support for our original
  findings.},
  year = {2002},
  month = {Aug},
  publisher = { MIT Press },
  editor = {T. G. Dietterich and S. Becker and Z. Ghahramani},
  address = { Cambridge, MA },
  booktitle = { Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems
(NIPS*2001), Vol. 14 },
  pages = {1247-1254},
  type = { mod;td;psy },
  file = { http://iLab.usc.edu/publications/doc/Itti_etal02nips.pdf },
  review = {full/conf},
  if = {2001 acceptance rate: 30%}
}

Downloads: 0