Attention Improves Object Representation in Visual Cortical Field Potentials

Selective attention improves perception and modulates neuronal responses, but how attention-dependent changes of cortical activity improve the processing of attended objects is an open question. Changes in total signal strength or enhancements in signal-to-noise ratio have been proposed as putative mechanisms. However, it is still not clear whether, and to what extent, these processes contribute to the large perceptual improvements. We studied the ability to discriminate states of activity in visual cortex evoked by differently shaped objects depending on selective attention in monkeys. We found that gamma-band activity from V4 and V1 contains a high amount of information about stimulus shape, which increases for V4 recordings considerably with attention in successful trials, but not in case of behavioral errors. This effect resulted from enhanced differences between the stimulus-specific distributions of power spectral amplitudes. It could be explained neither by enhancements of signal-to-noise ratios, nor by changes in total signal power. Instead our results indicate that attention causes underlying cortical network states to become more distinct for different stimuli, providing a new neurophysiological explanation for improvements of behavioral performance by attention. The absence of the enhancement in discriminability in trials with behavioral errors demonstrates the relevance of this novel neural mechanism for perception.