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A Top–Down and Bottom–Up Component of Visual Attention

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Abstract

A new constituent of visual attention theory is proposed based on research in an animal model system. That showed that the neuromodulators released by efference from that animal’s brain can accelerate or retard the potentials produced by visual stimulation of that animal’s photoreceptors. Such a possibility has never been considered in human behavioral research even though it has been clearly demonstrated that attention can alter the temporal window of visual perception. We therefore propose that attention theory should include new top–down and bottom–up components (TBC) with a top–down component that involves efferents that go from the brain to the photoreceptors and a bottom–up component that involves consequent neuromodulatory alterations of the timing of the afferent photoreceptor potentials evoked by light stimuli. Not long ago, it would have been infeasible to test the validity of TBC in humans. However, newly developed multifocal electroretinogram (mfERG) technology makes it possible to obtain comfortable and objective measures of the timing of human retinal potentials while obtaining quantitative behavioral measures of both the observer’s state of attention and of visual performance. If the present prediction is confirmed by such measures, it would allow the mfERG technique to be used for both the objective diagnosis of and the quantitative evaluation of treatments for a variety of attention disorders. These would include attention deficit hyperactivity disorders as well as several psychoses that involve attentional difficulties. The costs of testing TBC are modest; the potential benefits of applying this neurocomputational technology to assist sufferers could be substantial.

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Acknowledgments

We are particularly indebted for the expert technical assistance we received from Dr. Elwood K. Walls and Huiqi Yin as well as the help we received from Alicia Swan, Adrienne Lewis, Jennifer Fleets, Katherine Beck, Vincent Traverso, Ashley Orchard, and Crissanka Christadoss. We also wish to acknowledge that this program of research on temporal factors in vision began about a half century ago when the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) provided a grant (NsG 496) that purchased a Maxwellian view optical system that was used by the first author to conduct his doctoral dissertation research [40; Fig. 2]. No one then could possibly have predicted that NASA’s interest in visually guided orbital rendezvous might in any way lead eventually to improved methods of diagnosis and treatment of visual attention disorders.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Sensory Coding Laboratory, Department of Psychological Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, 47907-2081, USA

    Gerald S. Wasserman

  2. Department of Psychological and Brain Science, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA

    Amanda R. Bolbecker

  3. Department of Neurology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

    Jia Li

  4. Department of Psychology, Monmouth College, Monmouth, IL, USA

    Corrinne C. M. Lim-Kessler

Authors
  1. Gerald S. Wasserman
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  2. Amanda R. Bolbecker
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  3. Jia Li
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  4. Corrinne C. M. Lim-Kessler
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Correspondence to Gerald S. Wasserman.

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Wasserman, G.S., Bolbecker, A.R., Li, J. et al. A Top–Down and Bottom–Up Component of Visual Attention. Cogn Comput 3, 294–302 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12559-010-9058-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12559-010-9058-z

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