Article
Psychology, Mathematical
Douglas A. Addleman, Viola S. Stormer
Summary: Visual search benefits from advance knowledge of nontarget features, but it is unclear whether these features are suppressed proactively or reactively. The results demonstrate that nontarget features are ignored via reactive mechanisms rather than being proactively suppressed.
PSYCHONOMIC BULLETIN & REVIEW
(2022)
Article
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Nina N. Kowalewski, Janne Kauttonen, Patricia L. Stan, Brian B. Jeon, Thomas Fuchs, Steven M. Chase, Tai Sing Lee, Sandra J. Kuhlman
Summary: The development of the visual system is influenced by early-life experiences, as demonstrated by a study on mice showing that early visual experience can enhance natural scene discriminability by reducing the number of neurons needed to encode simpler stimuli and increasing responsiveness to natural scene features.
Article
Neurosciences
Bei Zhang, Ralph Weidner, Fredrik Allenmark, Sabine Bertleff, Gereon R. Fink, Zhuanghua Shi, Hermann J. Mueller
Summary: Observers can reduce interference by learning frequent distractor locations, which involves better suppression of distractors at those locations. Different types of distractors may lead to different neural mechanisms and correlate with how the distractors are processed.
Article
Neurosciences
Wen Wen, Zhibang Huang, Yin Hou, Sheng Li
Summary: Performing visual search tasks requires optimal attention deployment to promote target recognition and inhibit distractors. Rejection templates based on the feature of the distractor can be built to constrain the search process. The study found that in the fixed-cueing condition, participants were able to sustainably decode the cued colors during the retention interval, and those with higher decoding accuracy showed larger suppression benefits of distractor cueing in the search period. However, in the varied-cueing condition, the cued color could only be transiently decoded, and higher decoding accuracy was observed in participants with lower suppression benefit. The neural representations of the to-be-ignored color in the two cueing conditions and their reverse associations with behavioral performance suggest that rejection templates were formed in the fixed-cueing condition but not in the varied-cueing condition. Additionally, stronger posterior alpha lateralization and midfrontal theta/beta power were observed during the retention interval of the varied-cueing condition, indicating the cognitive costs of template formation caused by the trialwise change of distractor colors.
JOURNAL OF NEUROSCIENCE
(2022)
Article
Psychology
Troy A. W. Visser, Michael C. W. English, Murray T. Maybery
Summary: Autistic individuals and individuals with high levels of autistic-like traits often show better visual search performance than their neurotypical peers. However, this study found no evidence that this advantage is associated with superior distractor filtering. It suggests that the search advantages seen in previous studies may be linked to other mechanisms such as enhanced pre-attentive scene processing, better decision making, or more efficient response selection.
ATTENTION PERCEPTION & PSYCHOPHYSICS
(2022)
Article
Neurosciences
Norman Forschack, Christopher Gundlach, Steven Hillyard, Matthias M. Muller
Summary: This study used electrophysiological measures to investigate how attention is allocated to target and distractor stimuli in visual search with a small set-size. The results showed that the early proactive suppression hypothesis was not supported, and the attention allocation pattern in the two-stimulus search task is an initial capture of attention by all color-change stimuli followed by a further focusing of attention on the target.
Article
Biology
George A. Lyras, Lars Werdelin, Bartholomeus G. M. van der Geer, Alexandra A. E. van der Geer
Summary: Analysis of the coronal gyrus from fossil and extant carnivorans shows that early pinnipeds, such as Potamotherium, may have used their whiskers for foraging. This study provides insights into the underwater foraging behavior of early pinnipeds and highlights the importance of adaptations for survival in marine habitats. The reliance on whiskers appears to be an ancestral feature that favored the transition of pinnipeds from terrestrial to amphibious marine species.
COMMUNICATIONS BIOLOGY
(2023)
Article
Psychology, Multidisciplinary
Eun Bit Bae, Hyunsook Jang, Hyun Joon Shim
Summary: The study revealed that early-blind subjects show advantages in dichotic listening and temporal sequencing ability compared to sighted subjects. These advantages may be due to enhanced activity of the central auditory nervous system, especially the right hemisphere function, and the transfer of auditory information between the two hemispheres.
FRONTIERS IN PSYCHOLOGY
(2022)
Article
Psychology
Maelle Lerebourg, Floris P. de Lange, Marius V. Peelen
Summary: Visual search is influenced by the attentional template which represents the target. The diagnostic features of the target depend on the distractors. Previous research has shown that consistent distractor context shapes the attentional template for simple targets. This study investigates how distractor expectations bias attentional templates for complex shapes and whether these biases can be flexible or not.
JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY-HUMAN PERCEPTION AND PERFORMANCE
(2023)
Article
Biology
Mandy Bartsch, Christian Merkel, Mircea A. Schoenfeld, Jens-Max Hopf
Summary: The study found that the brain prioritizes the processing of distractor colors followed by stronger attenuation to expedite target identification. Dynamic adjustments of feature attention involve the temporally prioritized processing and elimination of distracting feature representations.
COMMUNICATIONS BIOLOGY
(2021)
Article
Neurosciences
Oscar Ferrante, Alexander Zhigalov, Clayton Hickey, Ole Jensen
Summary: Visual attention is affected by past experiences, and expectations about distractor locations can be learned and reduced through statistical learning. Using magnetoencephalography (MEG), it was found that early visual cortex showed reduced neural excitability at retinotopic locations associated with higher distractor probabilities. This suggests that proactive mechanisms of attention are involved in predictive distractor suppression and are associated with altered neural excitability in early visual cortex.
JOURNAL OF NEUROSCIENCE
(2023)
Article
Psychology
Ai-Su Li, Louisa Bogaerts, Jan Theeuwes
Summary: Previous studies have shown that participants can improve visual search performance by implicitly learning regularities regarding target locations. However, the present study found no evidence that such learning extends to the location of salient distractors. Despite pairing distractor regularities and presenting them in a structured order, participants showed no learning effect. These findings highlight important limitations for the modulation of visual attention by statistical regularities and the need to differentiate between different types of regularities.
ATTENTION PERCEPTION & PSYCHOPHYSICS
(2023)
Article
Behavioral Sciences
Sophie Wagner, Merlin Monzel
Summary: Recent studies have conflicting results regarding the relationship between mental imagery and schizophrenia, specifically the role of voluntary visual imagery in schizophrenic hallucinations. This study aimed to investigate this association using objective visual imagery tasks. The results showed that participants with schizophrenia had more hallucinatory experiences, but their scores on visual imagery measures did not differ from those without schizophrenia. The findings suggest that the association between mental imagery vividness and schizophrenia may involve other facets of mental imagery rather than visual imagery.
BRAIN AND BEHAVIOR
(2023)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Sandro L. Wiesmann, Melissa L. -H. Vo
Summary: It typically only takes a single glance to categorize our environment into different scene categories, and object information has been suggested to play a crucial role in this process. In four behavioral experiments, participants were tasked with categorizing single-object real-world scene photographs, and the results showed that single objects can indeed be sufficient for correct scene categorization within 50 ms of object presentation. The frequency and specificity of the object for the target scene category were identified as the most important object properties for human scene categorization.
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS
(2023)
Article
Psychology, Experimental
Xinger Yu, Raisa A. Rahim, Joy J. Geng
Summary: This study investigates the relationship between the formation of attentional templates and elements in the distractor context, and finds that target representations are influenced by the similarity of targets to distractors along other dimensions. The results are consistent with participants' strategies reported in the post-experiment questionnaire, indicating that the target template is task-adaptive.
JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY-GENERAL
(2023)
Article
Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence
Wouter Kruijne, Sander M. Bohte, Pieter R. Roelfsema, Christian N. L. Olivers
Summary: Working memory is crucial for guiding intelligent behavior in humans and nonhuman primates when relevant stimuli are absent. A neural network model called WorkMATe is introduced to simulate cognitive control over working memory content and learn the necessary operations for solving complex tasks. The model successfully acquires strategies for classical and more intricate tasks, demonstrating its potential for flexible memory control.
NEURAL COMPUTATION
(2021)
Article
Behavioral Sciences
Katya Olmos-Solis, Anouk M. van Loon, Christian N. L. Olivers
Summary: The study showed a division of labor across brain regions during working memory tasks, with posterior areas preferentially coding for content and frontal areas carrying information about the relevance status regardless of the category. The findings provide further evidence for a dissociation between content and control networks in working memory.
Article
Biochemical Research Methods
Joram van Driel, Christian N. L. Olivers, Johannes J. Fahrenfort
Summary: This study compared the effects of high-pass filtering, standard robust detrending, and trial-masked robust detrending on real and simulated EEG data of a working memory experiment. Results showed that trial-masked robust detrending prevents multivariate pattern displacement into silent periods without introducing artifacts, in contrast to high-pass filtering and standard robust detrending.
JOURNAL OF NEUROSCIENCE METHODS
(2021)
Article
Neurosciences
Benchi Wang, Tomas Knapen, Christian N. L. Olivers
Summary: This study reveals the flexibility of visual working memory, which strengthens the encoding of memory features based on the anticipated level of interference. The findings are further supported by brain imaging data.
JOURNAL OF COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE
(2022)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Christian O. Haeusler, Simon B. Eickhoff, Michael Hanke
Summary: This study investigates the perception of spatial information in naturalistic stimuli and suggests a functional subdivision of the parahippocampal place area (PPA) in the human brain. The activation of PPA correlates with visual spatial information in movies and semantic spatial information in audio descriptions, indicating a generalization of PPA activity.
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Adina S. Wagner, Laura K. Waite, Malgorzata Wierzba, Felix Hoffstaedter, Alexander Q. Waite, Benjamin Poldrack, Simon B. Eickhoff, Michael Hanke
Summary: This paper introduces a DataLad-based framework for reproducible data processing in compliance with open science mandates. The framework allows capturing machine-actionable computational provenance records to trace and verify research outcomes, as well as re-executing them on different computing infrastructures.
Article
Psychology, Mathematical
Elle van Heusden, Wieske van Zoest, Mieke Donk, Christian N. L. Olivers
Summary: Human vision involves the competition between saliency-driven and relevance-driven signals in directing eye movements. However, this study found that saliency-driven eye movements occur more rapidly after display onset, while relevance-driven eye movements occur later. The study also revealed that visual selection is not solely determined by the competition between saliency and relevance, but rather reflects the dynamic changes in these processes.
PSYCHONOMIC BULLETIN & REVIEW
(2022)
Article
Behavioral Sciences
Stefan Pollmann, Lei Zheng
Summary: Contextual cueing can rely on global configuration or local item positions. This study investigated the effects of these cues on the lateralization of cueing. Cueing by item position was tested by recombining previously learned displays while maintaining individual item locations but destroying the global configuration. On the other hand, cueing by configuration was investigated by rotating learned displays and changing all item positions while keeping the configuration intact. The findings suggest that only configural cues enable memory-guided search for targets across the entire display, while position cues only guide search for targets near the fixation.
Article
Engineering, Industrial
Fenne D. Roefs, Martin Hoogslag, Christian N. L. Olivers
Summary: Beach safety flags are an internationally recognized warning system, but little is known about people's familiarity with them. A study in the Netherlands found that there is a poor understanding of most beach warning flags, except for the red flag indicating high hazard. Surprisingly, the yellow flag, meant to discourage bathing, was often associated with safety and led to intentions of entering the water. Experience with danger in the sea did not improve knowledge of the flag system, but reduced the intention to enter the water.
Article
Neurosciences
Joshua Snell, Tom van Kempen, Christian N. L. Olivers
Summary: Central vision loss severely impacts the reading ability of patients with macular degeneration. A novel method of presenting words word-by-word with multiple repetitions around the fovea can improve reading performance.
Article
Psychology, Experimental
Caterina Trentin, Heleen A. Slagter, Christian N. L. Olivers
Summary: Attention is an emergent property that links sensory representations to action plans. Recent research suggests that similar mechanisms might operate within visual working memory (VWM), where linking a VWM object to an action plan strengthens its sensory memory representation and results in attentional biases. This study directly tested this hypothesis by comparing attentional biases induced by VWM representations that were the target of a future action, to those induced by VWM representations that were equally task-relevant but not the direct target of action. The results support the idea that action plans prioritize sensory representations in VWM.
Article
Psychology
Elle van Heusden, Christian N. L. Olivers, Mieke Donk
Summary: This study investigates how attentional capture is influenced by the relative eccentricities of a target and a distractor. The results show that items closer to fixation are more likely to capture attention. Interestingly, target and distractor eccentricity do not affect reaction times. The findings have important implications for our understanding of the selection process of attention.
ATTENTION PERCEPTION & PSYCHOPHYSICS
(2023)
Article
Neurosciences
Samson Chota, Surya Gayet, J. Leon Kenemans, Christian N. L. Olivers, Stefan Van der Stigchel
Summary: Our visual system devotes more resources to objects that are physically present, even though subjective experience suggests that perceived information is more strongly represented than memorized information. To test this, we manipulated perceptual availability and found that task-relevant features are more strongly represented in visual working memory than when they are perceptually available. This suggests that our visual system efficiently allocates resources to externally available information.
Article
Neurosciences
Elle Van Heusden, Christian N. L. Olivers, Mieke Donk
Summary: Peripheral vision plays an important role in selecting the target for the next eye movement. This study examines whether there is a bias in eye movement selection towards targets closer to the fixation point. Participants were presented with displays containing two identical targets and asked to move their eyes to one of them. The results show a bias towards selecting the target closest to fixation, which is stronger than predicted based on saccadic latency distributions. This suggests that attentional competition favors items that are close to the fixation point.
Article
Psychology, Multidisciplinary
Reshanne R. Reeder
Summary: Rhythmic visual flicker can induce pseudo-hallucinations and serve as a method to investigate anomalous perceptual experiences. In this study, Ganzflicker was used to analyze the visual experiences of individuals with different levels of mental imagery abilities. Results showed that individuals with higher imagery abilities were more likely to experience complex and vivid pseudo-hallucinations. Additionally, a positive linear relationship was found between imagery vividness and pseudo-hallucination vividness, while the relationship between imagery vividness and pseudo-hallucination complexity was categorical.
COLLABRA-PSYCHOLOGY
(2022)
Article
Behavioral Sciences
Andrea Gajardo-Vidal, Maxime Montembeault, Diego L. Lorca-Puls, Abigail E. Licata, Rian Bogley, Sabrina Erlhoff, Buddhika Ratnasiri, Zoe Ezzes, Giovanni Battistella, Elena Tsoy, Christa Watson Pereira, Jessica Deleon, Boon Lead Tee, Maya L. Henry, Zachary A. Miller, Katherine P. Rankin, Maria Luisa Mandelli, Katherine L. Possin, Maria Luisa Gorno-Tempini
Summary: This study investigates the potential differences in processing speed and neural correlates among the three variants of Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA). The findings reveal that non-verbal cognitive abilities, such as processing speed, are significantly impacted in nfvPPA and lvPPA patients compared to healthy controls and svPPA patients. Neuroimaging results confirm the importance of fronto-parietal regions associated with processing speed and executive control.
Article
Behavioral Sciences
Holger Wiese, Tsvetomila Popova, Maya Schipper, Deni Zakriev, Mike Burton, Andrew W. Young
Summary: Previous experiments have shown that brief exposure to unfamiliar individuals leads to the formation of new facial representations, which undergo changes and consolidation within the first day after learning.
Article
Behavioral Sciences
Astrid Prochnow, Xianzhen Zhou, Foroogh Ghorbani, Paul Wendiggensen, Veit Roessner, Bernhard Hommel, Christian Beste
Summary: Individuals organize events in their environment by partitioning them into discrete units. This study reveals that the neural activity in the brain plays a critical role in this process, reflecting the key elements of event segmentation.
Article
Behavioral Sciences
Zhenzhen Huo, Zhiyi Chen, Rong Zhang, Junye Xu, Tingyong Feng
Summary: Procrastination has adverse effects on personal growth and social development. Reward sensitivity is positively correlated with procrastination. This study used VBM and RSFC analyses to investigate the neural substrates underlying the association between reward sensitivity and procrastination. The results showed that the functional connectivity of the right parahippocampal gyrus-precuneus mediated the relationship between reward sensitivity and procrastination.
Article
Behavioral Sciences
Stefano Lasaponara, Gabriele Scozia, Silvana Lozito, Mario Pinto, David Conversi, Marco Costanzi, Tim Vriens, Massimo Silvetti, Fabrizio Doricchi
Summary: Cholinergic (Ach), Noradrenergic (NE), and Dopaminergic (DA) pathways are crucial in regulating spatial attention and determining inter-individual differences in temperamental traits. This study found that temperamental traits predict individual differences in the ability to orient spatial attention based on the probabilistic association between cues and targets. These findings highlight the importance of considering temperamental and personality traits in social and professional environments where attention control is essential.
Article
Behavioral Sciences
Darren J. Yeo, Courtney Pollack, Benjamin N. Conrad, Gavin R. Price
Summary: The processing of numerals as visual objects is supported by an Inferior Temporal Numeral Area (ITNA) in the bilateral inferior temporal gyri (ITG). Extant findings suggest some degree of hemispheric asymmetry in how the bilateral ITNAs process numerals. The study found that digit sensitivity did not differ between ITNAs, and digit sensitivity in both left and right ITNAs was associated with calculation skills. The study also revealed a right lateralization in engagement in alphanumeric categorization, and that the right ITNA showed greater discriminability between digits and letters.
Review
Behavioral Sciences
Beste Gulsuna, Abuzer Gungor, Alp O. Borcer, Ugur Ture
Summary: The fiber dissection technique has been used to study the internal structures of the brain, with less focus on white matter. The sagittal stratum, a white matter structure, has not received enough attention and has been a subject of controversy. Recent studies suggest potential functions of the sagittal stratum, emphasizing the importance of understanding this structure accurately.
Article
Behavioral Sciences
Nora Geiser, Brigitte Charlotte Kaufmann, Samuel Elia Johannes Knobel, Dario Cazzoli, Tobias Nef, Thomas Nyffeler
Summary: This study compared the effects of auditory and visual motion stimulation on spatial neglect and found that both interventions were equally effective in improving neglect. Multimodal motion stimulation also improved neglect, but did not show greater improvement than unimodal auditory or visual motion stimulation alone.
Article
Behavioral Sciences
Anna E. Hughes, Anna Nowakowska, Alasdair D. F. Clarke
Summary: This study examines the relationship between search slopes and search efficiency in visual search tasks, introduces the Target Contrast Signal (TCS) Theory, and extends it to a Bayesian multi-level framework. The findings demonstrate that TCS can predict data well, but distinguishing between contrast combination models proves to be difficult.
