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Attentional Top-Down Modulation, Models of

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Encyclopedia of Computational Neuroscience

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Definition

Attention – the ability of a sensory system to facilitate the processing of specific information at the expense of disregarding the remainder.

Bottom-up processes – information processing in the nervous system that operates in a feedforward way, advancing from sensory organs or areas at a low level of the cortical processing hierarchy.

Top-down influence – modulatory signals in the nervous system that originate from areas at a high level of the cortical processing hierarchy, influencing information processing in lower areas.

Saliency – a measure of the magnitude of the difference of a stimulus from its neighbors in space and time.

Detailed Description

The Case for Attention

Evolution has provided humans and other highly evolved species with powerful sensory systems. While our cortical processing capacity has also evolved and grown impressively, the torrent of information provided by our sensors far outstrips our ability to process it all. In addition, most of the sensory...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, German Primate Center, Goettingen, Germany

    Philipp Schwedhelm & Prof. Dr. Stefan Treue

  2. Faculty of Biology and Psychology, Goettingen University, Goettingen, Germany

    Prof. Dr. Stefan Treue

  3. Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, Goettingen University, Goettingen, Germany

    Philipp Schwedhelm & Prof. Dr. Stefan Treue

Authors
  1. Philipp Schwedhelm
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  2. Prof. Dr. Stefan Treue
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Philipp Schwedhelm .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Atlanta, Georgia, USA

    Dieter Jaeger

  2. Department of Biomedical Engineering, Florida International University, Miami, Florida, USA

    Ranu Jung

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Schwedhelm, P., Treue, S. (2014). Attentional Top-Down Modulation, Models of. In: Jaeger, D., Jung, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Computational Neuroscience. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7320-6_566-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7320-6_566-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-7320-6

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