Journal
JOURNAL OF VISION
Volume 9, Issue 6, Pages -Publisher
ASSOC RESEARCH VISION OPHTHALMOLOGY INC
DOI: 10.1167/9.6.2
Keywords
visual attention; steady-state visual evoked potential; feature selection; color
Categories
Funding
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
- U.S. National Eye Institute
- U.S. National Institute of Mental Health
Ask authors/readers for more resources
It is well-established that attention can select stimuli for preferential processing on the basis of non-spatial features such as color, orientation, or direction of motion. Evidence is mixed, however, as to whether feature-selective attention acts by increasing the signal strength of to-be-attended features irrespective of their spatial locations or whether it acts by guiding the spotlight of spatial attention to locations containing the relevant feature. To address this question, we designed a task in which feature-selective attention could not be mediated by spatial selection. Participants observed a display of intermingled dots of two colors, which rapidly and unpredictably changed positions, with the task of detecting brief intervals of reduced luminance of 20% of the dots of one or the other color. Both behavioral indices and electrophysiological measures of steady-state visual evoked potentials showed selectively enhanced processing of the attended-color items. The results demonstrate that feature-selective attention produces a sensory gain enhancement at early levels of the visual cortex that occurs without mediation by spatial attention.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available