Attention acts to suppress goal-based conflict under high competition

2016/10/29 by Claflin, Omar
Neuroscience · Psychology · #Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI) #Biology #Cognitive psychology #Competition (biology) #Computer science #FOS: Biological sciences #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Feed forward #Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies #Neural dynamics and brain function #Neurons and Cognition (q-bio.NC) #Neuroscience #Psychology #Receptive field #Task (project management) #Top-down and bottom-up design #Visual cortex #Visual perception and processing mechanisms

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1610.09431

published in arXiv (Cornell University) (Cornell University)

Abstract

It is known that when multiple stimuli are present, top-down attention selectively enhances the neural signal in the visual cortex for task-relevant stimuli, but this has been tested only under conditions of minimal competition of visual attention. Here we show during high competition, that is, two stimuli in a shared receptive field possessing opposing modulatory goals, top-down attention suppresses both task-relevant and irrelevant neural signals within 100 ms of stimuli onset. This non-selective engagement of top-down attentional resources serves to reduce the feedforward signal representing irrelevant stimuli.

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