Role of the Dorsal Visual Stream in Shifting Attention in Response to Peripheral Visual Information.
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1
University of Auckland, School of Psychology, New Zealand
We propose that the dorsal visual stream plays an important role in the rapid attention shifts that occur in response to peripheral environmental cues. We used high density EEG, together with source localisation, to evaluate activity in the dorsal and ventral streams in response to bilaterally presented peripheral visual stimuli. When these stimuli acted as attentional cues, predicting the location of a subsequent target object, source localisation applied to the rising edge of the P1 component of the event-related potential (ERP) elicited in response to the stimuli, revealed evidence of early dorsal stream activation; but when participants made a conscious perceptual judgement about the same stimuli, source localisation revealed early activation in temporal lobe structures associated with the ventral stream. When source localisation was applied to the peak of the P1 component of the ERP elicited by our bilateral stimuli, closely similar patterns, reflecting primarily occipital activation were seen, regardless of whether the stimuli acted as spatial cues, or were discriminated consciously. These results are consistent with our proposal that 'exogenous' attention shifts are driven by rapid, non-semantic processing of visual features in the dorsal stream, followed by re-entrant feedback which prioritises visual processing at an attended location in occipital cortex. The data also suggest that early visual processing in occipital cortex is influenced by varying patterns of re-entrant influences from the dorsal and ventral streams, depending on task context.
Keywords:
Attention,
Visual Perception,
EEG,
spatial cueing,
P1,
dorsal stream,
ventral stream,
Re-entrant feedback
Conference:
XII International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON-XII), Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, 27 Jul - 31 Jul, 2014.
Presentation Type:
Poster
Topic:
Attention
Citation:
Lambert
T,
Wootton
A,
Ryckman
N and
Wilkie
J
(2015). Role of the Dorsal Visual Stream in Shifting Attention in Response to Peripheral Visual Information..
Conference Abstract:
XII International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON-XII).
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2015.217.00264
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Received:
19 Feb 2015;
Published Online:
24 Apr 2015.
*
Correspondence:
Prof. Tony Lambert, University of Auckland, School of Psychology, Auckland, New Zealand, t.lambert@auckland.ac.nz