Development of spatial suppression surrounding the focus of visual attention.

The environment often engages multiple sensory channels simultaneously. When events or objects stimulate more than one sensory organ, they are more likely to be detected and more efficiently processed than events stimulating just one sensory modality (e.g. Stein & Stanford, 2008). Such crossmodal enhancement requires that the sensory inputs arising from one event are correctly assigned to that object (termed the ‘correspondence problem’; Ernst & Bulthoff, 2004). Multisensory research has demonstrated that features that are shared by all sensory systems, such as space, time or meaning are used for crossmodal binding (for recent reviews see Driver & Noesselt, 2008; Stein & Stanford, 2008). For example, in a cocktail party setting, matching of the temporal dynamics of lip movements and of speech sound allows us to assign the correct message to each speaker. Furthermore, this ability of crossmodal binding assists in orienting spatial attention to a particular conversation partner while ignoring other sources of distracting sensory information, such as other peoples’ conversations. The binding of synchronous auditory and visual (speech) signals seems to happen automatically and pre-attentively (see Driver, 1996; Bertelson et al., 2000; Vroomen et al., 2001a). The voluntary orienting of spatial attention to one particular speaker or, more generally, to an event is an example of endogenous attention allocation. By contrast, stimulus-driven orienting of spatial attention, elicited by the saliency of the stimulus, has been termed exogenous attention. Due to their relatively high salience, such pre-attentively detected, congruent cross-modal stimuli may function as exogenous attentional cues (Spence & Driver, 2000; Stekelenburg et al., 2004; Senkowski et al., 2008). In this issue, Fairhall & Macaluso (2009) provide evidence for the operation of both mechanisms: (i) pre-attentively crossmodal matching and (ii) enhancement of crossmodal interaction by endogenous attention. The authors presented the lips of two speaking faces, one in the left and one in the right visual hemifield. The centrally presented auditory stream was matched with the lip movements of one speaker only. In such a situation people generally perceive the auditory speech signal as originating from the location of the matching lips. This phenomenon is well known as the ‘ventriloquist effect’. Critically, Fairhall and Macaluso also asked participants to perform a visual detection task in one hemifield only. This task served to systematically manipulate the focus of visual spatial attention. The auditory stream did not have any significance to the participants and thus could be ignored. This paradigm allowed the authors to compare brain responses as assessed with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to multisensory, matching audio-visual speech sequences that occurred either at the location of visual spatial attention (‘congruent condition’) or on the opposite side (‘incongruent condition’) while keeping physical stimulation constant. The authors report that visual attention enhances activity in brain regions well accepted as multisensory integration areas (Driver & Noesselt, 2008), such as the superior temporal sulcus (STS) and the superior colliculus (SC), only when the auditory track matched the attended lip movements. Similar effects were observed in several visual brain regions, including the primary visual cortex. These results suggest that the processing of congruent cross-modal stimuli within the locus of endogenous visual spatial attention is enhanced. Furthermore, the data of Fairhall & Macaluso are compatible with the view that binding of audio-visual speech can occur pre-attentively. When audio-visual matching speech was presented on the opposite side of the locus of visual-spatial attention (incongruent condition), participants performed worse in the visual detection task than when matching stimuli were presented on the same side as the focus of participant’s endogenous visual spatial attention (congruent condition). These behavioural results, together with findings from earlier studies (Spence & Driver, 2000; Vroomen et al., 2001b), suggest that the audio-visual binding process that elicited a ventriloquist illusion towards the opposite side of the visual attention focus took place outside the locus of endogenous attention and resulted in an exogenously attentional shift towards the task irrelevant side, which in turn interfered with the visual detection task. In summary, the results described by Fairhall and Macaluso suggest that endogenous (visual) spatial attention amplifies the processing of congruent cross-modal input that is likely integrated and detected pre-attentively. Fairhall and Macaluso did not attempt to link the enhanced activity in multisensory and early visual cortical regions to behavioural data such as, for example, improved speech comprehension. The question of whether activity changes in multisensory regions due to endogenous spatial attention are accompanied by altered multisensory performance (Alsius et al., 2005) remains to be investigated in future work. Moreover, other top-down influences on multisensory integration such as plausibility and meaning (Kitagawa & Spence, 2005; Hein et al., 2007) will need to be investigated in more detail to extend our understanding of the conditions when and which multisensory binding processes are subject to voluntary modulation. European Journal of Neuroscience, Vol. 29, pp. 1245–1246, 2009 doi:10.1111/j.1460-9568.2009.06715.x

The visual system employs a sophisticated balance of attentional mechanisms: salient stimuli are prioritized for visual processing, yet observers can also ignore such stimuli when their goals require directing attention elsewhere. A powerful determinant of visual salience is local feature contrast: if a local region differs from its immediate surround along one or more feature dimensions, it will appear more salient. We used high-resolution functional MRI (fMRI) at 7T to characterize the modulatory effects of bottom-up salience and top-down voluntary attention within multiple sites along the early visual pathway, including visual areas V1-V4 and the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN). Observers viewed arrays of spatially distributed gratings, where one of the gratings immediately to the left or right of fixation differed from all other items in orientation or motion direction, making it salient. To investigate the effects of directed attention, observers were cued to attend to the grating to the left or right of fixation, which was either salient or nonsalient. Results revealed reliable additive effects of top-down attention and stimulus-driven salience throughout visual areas V1-hV4. In comparison, the LGN exhibited significant attentional enhancement but was not reliably modulated by orientation- or motion-defined salience. Our findings indicate that top-down effects of spatial attention can influence visual processing at the earliest possible site along the visual pathway, including the LGN, whereas the processing of orientation- and motion-driven salience primarily involves feature-selective interactions that take place in early cortical visual areas.NEW & NOTEWORTHY While spatial attention allows for specific, goal-driven enhancement of stimuli, salient items outside of the current focus of attention must also be prioritized. We used 7T fMRI to compare salience and spatial attentional enhancement along the early visual hierarchy. We report additive effects of attention and bottom-up salience in early visual areas, suggesting that salience enhancement is not contingent on the observer's attentional state.

ABSTRACTThe aim of the current study was twofold: (1) to validate the use of action sport cameras for quantifying focus of visual attention in sailing and (2) to apply this method to examine whether an external focus of attention is associated with better performance in upwind sailing. To test the validity of this novel quantification method, we first calculated the agreement between gaze location measures and head orientation measures in 13 sailors sailing upwind during training regattas using a head mounted eye tracker. The results confirmed that for measuring visual focus of attention in upwind sailing, the agreement for the two measures was high (intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) = 0.97) and the 95% limits of agreement were acceptable (between −8.0% and 14.6%). In a next step, we quantified the focus of visual attention in sailing upwind as fast as possible by means of an action sport camera. We captured sailing performance, operationalised as boat speed in the direction of the wind, and environmental conditions using a GPS, compass and wind meter. Four trials, each lasting 1 min, were analysed for 15 sailors each, resulting in a total of 30 upwind speed trials on port tack and 30 upwind speed trials on starboard tack. The results revealed that in sailing – within constantly changing environments – the focus of attention is not a significant predictor for better upwind sailing performances. This implicates that neither external nor internal foci of attention was per se correlated with better performances. Rather, relatively large interindividual differences seem to indicate that different visual attention strategies can lead to similar performance outcomes.

This research is a quasi-experimental and causal-comparative study, which has been conducted to compare the attentional bias or selective information processing and focus of attention in children with conduct disorder and normal children. Out of the children referring to psychiatric offices and Psychological Services Center in Neishabour, 50 children with conduct disorder (according to diagnostic interview based on DSM-IV and interview using KSADS) were selected through voluntary and available sampling. Normal sample was selected through multistage cluster sampling from among the school students of Neishabour City. Questionnaires on attentional bias, Stroop Test and Recognition test were applied for data collection. Data was analyzed in independent groups using t-test. The results indicated that there is a significant difference between children with conduct disorder and normal children in terms of attentional bias or selective information processing and focus of attention (p< 0.05). DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2016.v7n3s3p143

Event Abstract Back to Event An ERP study about altered visual attentional system in bipolar disorder Toshihiko Maekawa1*, T. Tsunoda1, N. Oribe1, N. Fukushima1, T. Onitsuka1, S. Tobimatsu1 and S. Kanba1 1 Departments of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurophysiology,Kyushu University, Japan BACKGROUND: Bipolar disorder (BP) is one of mental disease which hard to make diagnosis. Cognitive dysfunction of BP may result from abnormal attentional processing in the brain. Attentional processing consists of two stages: One is involuntary attention (automatic) processing and the other is voluntary attention processing. The former is assessed by mismatch negativity (MMN) while the latter is evaluated by P300. These ERP components may be useful to discriminate a patient with BP from healthy person. The aim of this study was to clarify abnormality of visual attention system in BP by measuring P300 and visual MMN (vMMN). METHODS Eleven patients with BP were seated in front of a 20-inch monitor in the dark room comfortably. They were instructed to attend to a story through earphones binaurally and to also pay attention to a visual target which was presented on a monitor. Black-white circular windmill patterns consisting of a standard, a deviant, and a target stimulus whose ratios were 8:1:1 were presented on the monitor randomly. The difference in the three stimuli was the number of vanes. EEG was recorded by 128-ch high dense array equipment throughout the experiment continuously. VMMN was obtained by subtracting ERPs to deviant stimulus from that to standard stimulus. P300 was recorded by the response of target stimulus. RESULTS Data of nine patients with BP were analyzed. There was not statistical difference in behavior performance (accuracy of questionnaire about the context of heard story and accuracy and response time of target detection) between BP and normal control (NC) group. Responses of all of the participants were obtained P300 and vMMN. P300 in BP was delayed than that of NC. Mean amplitude of vMMN in BP was significantly smaller than that of NC, and latency of vMMN of the patients was prolonged from that of NC. CONCLUSIONS Our results suggest that there exists abnormal visual attentional processing in BP. P300 and vMMN are more sensitive to detect it than behavior performance index. Conference: MMN 09 Fifth Conference on Mismatch Negativity (MMN) and its Clinical and Scientific Applications, Budapest, Hungary, 4 Apr - 7 Apr, 2009. Presentation Type: Oral Presentation Topic: Workshop 1: Visual Mismatch Negativity (vMMN) Citation: Maekawa T, Tsunoda T, Oribe N, Fukushima N, Onitsuka T, Tobimatsu S and Kanba S (2009). An ERP study about altered visual attentional system in bipolar disorder. Conference Abstract: MMN 09 Fifth Conference on Mismatch Negativity (MMN) and its Clinical and Scientific Applications. doi: 10.3389/conf.neuro.09.2009.05.030 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 20 Mar 2009; Published Online: 20 Mar 2009. * Correspondence: Toshihiko Maekawa, Departments of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurophysiology,Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan, hiko.maekawa@gmail.com Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Toshihiko Maekawa T. Tsunoda N. Oribe N. Fukushima T. Onitsuka S. Tobimatsu S. Kanba Google Toshihiko Maekawa T. Tsunoda N. Oribe N. Fukushima T. Onitsuka S. Tobimatsu S. Kanba Google Scholar Toshihiko Maekawa T. Tsunoda N. Oribe N. Fukushima T. Onitsuka S. Tobimatsu S. Kanba PubMed Toshihiko Maekawa T. Tsunoda N. Oribe N. Fukushima T. Onitsuka S. Tobimatsu S. Kanba Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.

A mathematical model of the interaction between bottom-up and top-down attention controllers in response to a target and a distractor in human beings

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Intranasal vasopressin like oxytocin increases social attention by influencing top-down control, but additionally enhances bottom-up control

The three projects documented in this thesis investigated the role of three forms of attention in visual processing. Spatial, feature-based and temporal attention. The spatial and feature-based attentional characteristics were studied by conducting extracellular recordings from neurons of area MT and MSTd of macaque visual cortex. While the role of temporal attention was studied in a human psychophysics project. In the physiology projects we first defined the tuning characteristics of neurons from area MT and MSTd for two stimulus dimensions, namely spiral motion stimuli (SMS) and linear motion stimuli (LMS) on the basis of directionality index, the relative frequency of tuned versus untuned neurons, and the individual cells responses to the two forms of stimuli. We found that MT and MSTd showed differential tuning to LMS and SMS. Area MSTd demonstrated better selectivity for SMS as compared to LMS. Conversely, area MT was better tuned to LMS than SMS. Further, we compared spatial and feature-based attentional modulation in area MT and MSTd across SMS and LMS. We found that spatial attention modulates the responses of neurons in both the areas irrespective of the feature dimension defining the attended stimuli. On the other hand feature-based attention was restricted to the stimulus dimension for which an area showed better selectivity, that is SMS for MSTd and LMS for MT. We also observed that the correlation of firing rates with reaction times was restricted to an area’s preferred stimulus dimension. The presence of a significant negative correlation of firing rate with reaction time in area MSTd when attention was directed to its preferred dimension (SMS), indicated that these neurons were involved in perceptual processing of SMS. Similarly, the presence of a significant negative correlation of firing rates with the reaction times in area MT when attention was directed to LMS, provides evidence that MT neurons were involved in perceptual processing of LMS. Taken together, these results show that neurons across the visual cortex are tuned to a range of stimulus dimensions. This multiple stimulus selectivity is thought to be utilized to develop a saliency map (by interaction of bottom-up and top-down processes), which marks the behaviorally relevant aspects of visual space. These behaviorally relevant aspects of the visual space are then preferentially processed throughout the visual hierarchy, and our results suggests that a given area contributes to visual perception by flexibly processing only the stimulus dimension for which it shows best selectivity as a function of stimulus relevance. Finally in human subjects we investigated the temporal characteristics of visual motion processing, using the ‘attentional blink’ paradigm. Attentional blink is a widely studied phenomenon, but almost all studies to the date have been are restricted to stationary stimuli. We here extended this paradigm to motion stimuli. We found the presence of an attentional blink in the motion domain, in that the detection of second of the two target (motion) stimuli was severely degraded when it was presented within 450ms of the first target (motion) stimulus. However, our results were slightly different from the experiments with the stationary stimuli. First, there was an absence of the lag-1 sparing effect typically found with stationary stimuli and second, the time interval over which the attentional blink was observed was about 100ms shorter than typically reported for stationary stimuli. Post-hoc analysis showed that these effects in the motion domain were dependent upon the direction of motion of the first target. Our data showed that when the first target moved in the opposite direction to the second target, there was no attentional blink, but when the first target moved in an orthogonal direction to the second target, there was an attentional blink. These results are in agreement to previous studies showing that the processing of motion stimuli is facilitated when it is preceded by a stimulus moving in opposite directions, while processing of motion stimuli is suppressed when it is preceded by a stimulus moving in an orthogonal direction. Taken together the results of this thesis provides an important contribution to our understanding of the role of attention in visual motion processing. It will be interesting to extend this study in other visual cortical areas and measure spatial and feature-based attention from same set of neurons across different stimulus dimension.

Visual-Spatial Attention in Developmental Dyslexia

In this paper, we present a system to monitor a subject's Visual Focus of Attention (VFOA) based on his/her head poses. The system first detects faces from video images and determines if the detected face is a frontal or profile face. If a frontal face is detected, the system further estimates the head pose from the face image. Instead of estimating accurate head poses through detection or tracking methods, we formulate the problem as a classification problem and classify the head pose into one of a predefined number of poses using a local discriminant projection (LDP) method. The LDP method uses two graphs for the modeling the head pose embedding, one is the nearest native neighbor graph, the other is the nearest invader graph. We evaluate the LDP method in CAS-PEAL Database with 21 head poses and a realistic data set with 9 poses collected from our application scenario. The experimental results indicate that our approach outperforms other methods. We describe the implementation of the system with an application in monitoring customers' VFOA in a display window that exhibits merchandise in a shop. The system can be used to index and retrieve information for customer analysis.

Four-dot masking is a new form of visual masking that does not involve local contour interactions or spatial superimposition of the target stimulus and the mask (as, e.g., in pattern or metacontrast masking). Rather, the effective masking mechanism is based on object substitution. Object substitution masking occurs when low-level visual information representations are altered before target identification through iterative interaction with high-level visual processing stages has been completed. Interestingly, object substitution interacts with attention processes: Strong masking effects are observed when attentional orientation toward the target location is delayed. In contrast, no masking occurs when attention can be rapidly shifted to and engaged onto the target location. We investigated the neural basis of object substitution masking by studying the interaction of spatial attention and masking processes using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Behavioral data indicated a two-way interaction between the factors Spatial Attention (valid vs. invalid cueing) and Masking (four-dot vs. pattern masking). As expected, spatial attention improved performance more strongly during object substitution masking. Functional correlates of this interaction were found in the primary visual cortex, higher visual areas, and left intraparietal sulcus. A region-of-interest analysis in these areas revealed that the largest blood oxygenation level-dependent signal changes occurred during effective four-dot masking. In contrast, the weakest signal changes in these areas were observed when target visibility was highest. The data suggest that these areas represent an object substitution network dedicated to the generation and testing of a perceptual hypotheses as described by the object substitution theory of masking of Di-Lollo et al. [Competition for consciousness among visual events: The psychophysics of reentrant visual processes. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 129, 481–507, 2000].

ObjectivesAs crimes unfold, how is situational information channeled into decisions? Methodological tools capable of answering this question can advance criminological theory and research. This preregistered study introduces Focal Visual Attention (FVA) as a decision-making construct for measuring visual information processing during realistic, dynamic crime-related scenarios.MethodsWe recruited 262 German-speaking male participants who viewed two 5-minute immersive 360° videos depicting a personal provocation and a witnessed sexual harassment incident in a bar from a point-of-view perspective. Eye-tracking recorded ~ 4.35 million gaze points. Post hoc, mean-shift clustering, an unsupervised machine-learning algorithm, identified regions of interest (ROIs). Fixations within these ROIs served as proxies for FVA. Linear mixed-effects models examined temporal changes in FVA and associations with individual characteristics.ResultsOverall, visual attention to conflict-relevant stimuli increased over time, with additional avoidance fixations toward exits. Participants with histories of violence and/or prior police involvement showed distinct attention patterns. FVA also varied with self-reported emotions, cognitive appraisals of risk and benefit, and intentions to respond aggressively.ConclusionsFVA provides a robust, quantifiable measure of moment-to-moment visual attention in crime and analogous decision making. Methodologically, this study demonstrates a scalable framework for analyzing high-density eye-tracking data using immersive 360° video and unsupervised machine learning. Substantively, the findings extend our understanding of crime decision making with potential to inform research in policing, situational crime prevention, and fear-of-crime.

Make the environment that can be achieved, fires, used and experienced by anyone, including those with reduced mobility, is an increasingly important need for professionals. Being the eye tracking is an assistive technology that enables you to identify objectively the visual perception was held an experiment that allows analyzing the people’s difficulties in internal visual identification on buildings. The article goal is to identify the focus of visual attention in people with motor disabilities using eye tracking glasses. To perform the experiment was used Senso Motoric Instruments (SMI) eye tracking glasses and was did analyses with the BeGaze software version 3.6. The results indicate the lack of visual information causes difficulties for people to locate and identify the correct route for the offset inside a building, reducing the subjectivity in making decisions to make accessible environments. The tests show that the participants do not have fixed their gaze on specific points, because it remained looking for visual information into the building generating lack of orientation and difficulties to define the right route at offset. With this experiment was possible to validate an application of the device to contribute to the decision-making process of professionals to make accessible environments. In addition, they recognized the particularities in the use of Assistive Technology, the glasses eye tracker, and the possibility of being used in the analysis of various tasks contributing in the Design, in the Architecture, and the Engineering.

Estimating the focus of attention of a person highly depends on her/his gaze directionality. Here, we propose a new method for estimating visual focus of attention using head rotation, as well as fuzzy fusion of head rotation and eye gaze estimates, in a fully automatic manner, without the need for any special hardware or a priori knowledge regarding the user, the environment or the setup. Instead, we propose a system aimed at functioning under unpretending conditions, only with the usage of simple hardware, like a normal web-camera. Our system is aimed at functioning in a human-computer interaction environment, considering a person is facing a monitor with a camera adjusted on top. To this aim, we propose in this paper two novel techniques, based on local and appearance information, estimating head rotation, and we adaptively fuse them in a common framework. The system is able to recognize head rotational movement, under translational movements of the user towards any direction, without any knowledge or a-priori estimate of the user's distance from the camera or camera intrinsic parameters.