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Top-down attention allows neural networks, both artificial and biological, to focus on the information most relevant for a given task. This is known to enhance performance in visual perception. But it remains unclear how attention brings…
The human brain prioritises relevant sensory information to perform different tasks. Enhancement of task-relevant information requires flexible allocation of attentional resources, but it is still a mystery how this is operationalised in…
When two stimuli are present in the receptive field of a V4 neuron, the firing rate response is between the weakest and strongest response elicited by each of the stimuli alone (Reynolds et al, 1999, Journal of Neuroscience 19:1736-1753).…
Visual attention has shown usefulness in image captioning, with the goal of enabling a caption model to selectively focus on regions of interest. Existing models typically rely on top-down language information and learn attention implicitly…
We investigate attention as the active pursuit of useful information. This contrasts with attention as a mechanism for the attenuation of irrelevant information. We also consider the role of short-term memory, whose use is critical to any…
When selective attention is devoted to one of multiple stimuli within receptive fields of neurons in visual area V4, cells respond as if only the attended stimulus was present. The underlying neural mechanisms are still debated, but…
The capacity to filter out irrelevant information from our environment is critical to efficient processing. Yet, during development, when building a knowledge base of the world is occurring, the ability to selectively allocate attentional…
Selective attention can momentarily alter visual appearance, but can such effects be learned? We tested whether training attention under sensory competition produces lasting changes in perceived contrast. Across seven days, participants…
Joint attention - the ability to purposefully coordinate attention with another agent, and mutually attend to the same thing -- is a critical component of human social cognition. In this paper, we ask whether joint attention can be useful…
Top-down attention allows people to focus on task-relevant visual information. Is the resulting perceptual boost task-dependent in naturalistic settings? We aim to answer this with a large-scale computational experiment. First, we design a…
Object-based attention is a key component of the visual system, relevant for perception, learning, and memory. Neurons tuned to features of attended objects tend to be more active than those associated with non-attended objects. There is a…
Previous studies suggested that lateral interactions of V1 cells are responsible, among other visual effects, of bottom-up visual attention (alternatively named visual salience or saliency). Our objective is to mimic these connections with…
Biological agents have adopted the principle of attention to limit the rate of incoming information from the environment. One question that arises is if an artificial agent has access to only a limited view of its surroundings, how can it…
Being attentive to task-relevant features can improve task performance, but paying attention comes with its own metabolic cost. Therefore, strategic allocation of attention is crucial in performing the task efficiently. This work aims to…
When attention is directed into the receptive field of a V4 neuron, its contrast response curve is shifted to lower contrast values (Reynolds et al, 2000, Neuron 26:703). Attention also increases the coherence between neurons responding to…
The primary visual cortex processes a large amount of visual information, however, due to its large receptive fields, when multiple stimuli fall within one receptive field, there are computational problems. To solve this problem, the visual…
In the new digital age, information is available in large quantities. Since information consumes primarily the attention of its recipients, the scarcity of attention is becoming the main limiting factor. In this study, we investigate the…
Attention endows animals an ability to concentrate on the most relevant information among a deluge of distractors at any given time, either through volitionally 'top-down' biasing, or driven by automatically 'bottom-up' saliency of stimuli,…
Predictive coding theory suggests that conscious perception results from the interaction between top-down and bottom-up signals in the brain. However, the electrophysiological signatures of top-down predictions are not clear yet. Here, we…
Two prominent strategies that the human visual system uses to reduce incoming information are spatial integration and selective attention. Although spatial integration summarizes and combines information over the visual field, selective…