4.7 Article

LIP responses to a popout stimulus are reduced if it is overtly ignored

Journal

NATURE NEUROSCIENCE
Volume 9, Issue 8, Pages 1071-1076

Publisher

NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
DOI: 10.1038/nn1734

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Funding

  1. NEI NIH HHS [R24 EY015634-03, P30 EY019007, R01 EY014978-04, R21 EY017938-02, R21 EY017938, R21 EY017938-01, R24 EY015634-01, R01 EY014978-01, R01 EY014978-05, R24 EY015634, R24 EY015634-02, R24 EY015634-04, R01 EY014978] Funding Source: Medline

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Bright objects capture our attention by virtue of 'popping out' from their surroundings. This correlates with strong responses in cortical areas thought to be important in attentional allocation. Previous studies have suggested that with the right mindset or training, humans can ignore popout stimuli. We studied the activity of neurons in monkey lateral intraparietal area while monkeys performed a visual search task. The monkeys were free to move their eyes, and a distractor, but never the search target, popped out. On trials in which the monkeys made a saccade directly to the search target, the popout distractor evoked a smaller response than the non-popout distractors. The intensity of the response to the popout correlated inversely with the monkeys' ability to ignore it. We suggest that this modulation corresponds to a top-down mechanism that the brain uses to adjust the parietal representation of salience.

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