Chapter 6

Visual Attention
Ref. Sensation and Perception _ E. Bruce Goldstein
Figure 6.5 ❚ (a) A visual scene. (b) Salience map of the scene determined by analyzing the color,
contrast, and orientations in the scene. Lighter areas indicate greater salience. (Reprinted from
Vision Research, 42, Parkhurst, D., Law, K., and Niebur, E., 107–123, (2002), with permission from
Elsevier.)
Figure 6.20 ❚ (a) A single object. Binding features is simple in this
case because all of the features are at one location. (b) When
multiple objects with many features are present, binding (a) (b)
becomes more complicated
Figure 6.22 ❚ Find the horizontal line in (a) and then the
green horizontal line in (b).
Figure 6.23 ❚ How
synchrony can indicate
which neurons are firing to
the same object. See text
for explanation. (Based on
Engel, A. K., Fries, P.,
Konig, P., Brecht, M., &
Singer, W. (1999). Temporal
binding, binocular rivalry,
and consciousness.
Consciousness and
Cognition, 8, 128–151.)
Figure 6.24 ❚ The results of Colby et al.’s (1995) experiment showing how attention affects the responding of
a neuron in a monkey’s parietal cortex. The monkey always looked at the dot marked “Fix.” A stimulus light was
flashed within the circle off to the side. (a) Nerve firing when monkey was not paying attention to the light.
(b) Nerve firing when monkey was paying attention to the light. (Reprinted from Colby, C. L., Duhamel, J.-R,
& Goldberg, M. E. (1995). Oculocentric spatial representation in parietal cortex. Cerebral Cortex, 5, 470–481.
Copyright © 1995, with permission from Oxford University Press.)
Figure 6.25 ❚ Enhancement
of the rate of nerve firing
caused by attention for
neurons in areas V1, MT,
and MST. Area MT is in the
dorsal stream, and MST is
further “downstream.”
(Maunsell, J. H. R. (2004).
The role of attention in
visual cerebral cortex. In L.
M. Chalupa & J. S. Werner
(Eds.), The visual
neurosciences (pp. 1538–
1545). Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press.)
Figure 6.26 ❚ Top: scan path as a
monkey looked for a target (the parrot
on the roof). Just below picture: firing of
an IT neuron as the monkey was
looking. Bottom: graph showing how far
the monkey’s gaze was from the parrot.
Notice that the neuron begins firing just
after the monkey has fixated on the
parrot (arrow), and shortly after this the
monkey pulls the lever, indicating that it
has identified the parrot (vertical line).
(From Sheinberg, D. L., & Logothetis,
N. K. (2001). Noticing familiar objects in
real world scenes: The role of temporal
cortical neurons in natural vision.
Journal of Neuroscience, 21, 1340–
1350.)