Differential Effects of Endogenous and Exogenous Attention on Sensory Tuning

Covert spatial attention (without concurrent eye movements) improves performance in many visual tasks (e.g., orientation discrimination and visual search). However, both covert attention systems-endogenous (voluntary) and exogenous (involuntary)-exhibit differential effects on performance in tasks mediated by spatial and temporal resolution suggesting an underlying mechanistic difference. We investigated whether these differences manifest in sensory tuning by assessing whether and how endogenous and exogenous attention differentially alter the representation of two basic visual dimensions-orientation and spatial frequency (SF). The same human observers detected a grating embedded in noise in two separate experiments (with endogenous or exogenous attention cues). Reverse correlation was used to infer the underlying neural representation from behavioral responses, and we linked our results to established neural computations via a normalization model of attention. Both endogenous and exogenous attention similarly improved performance at the attended location by enhancing the gain of all orientations without changing tuning width. In the SF dimension, endogenous attention enhanced the gain of SFs above and below the target SF, whereas exogenous attention only enhanced those above. Additionally, exogenous attention shifted peak sensitivity to SFs above the target SF, whereas endogenous attention did not. Both covert attention systems modulated sensory tuning via the same computation (gain changes). However, there were differences in the strength of the gain. Compared with endogenous attention, exogenous attention had a stronger orientation gain enhancement but a weaker overall SF gain enhancement. These differences in sensory tuning may underlie differential effects of endogenous and exogenous attention on performance.

Automated summary

Covert attention, both endogenous and exogenous, improves performance by enhancing gain in all orientations without changing tuning width. In the spatial frequency dimension, endogenous attention enhances gain both above and below target frequency, whereas exogenous attention only enhances gain above. Exogenous attention also shifts peak sensitivity to frequencies above target, while endogenous attention does not.