Probing the Role of Feature Dimension Maps in Visual Cognition: Impact of Salience Level (Expt 1.1)

Study Summary

How does one know what to look at in a scene? Imagine a "Where's Waldo" game - it's challenging to find Waldo because there are many 'salient' locations in the picture, each vying for one's attention. One can only attend to a small location on the picture at a given moment, so to find Waldo, one needs to direct their attention to different locations. One prominent theory about how one accomplishes this claims that important locations are identified based on distinct feature types (for example, motion or color), with locations most unique compared to the background most likely to be attended. An important component of this theory is that individual feature dimensions (again, color or motion) are computed within their own 'feature maps', which are thought to be implemented in specific brain regions. However, whether and how specific brain regions contribute to these feature maps remains unknown. The goal of this study is to determine how brain regions that respond strongly to different feature types (color and motion) and which encode spatial locations of visual stimuli extract 'feature dimension maps' based on stimulus properties, including feature contrast. The investigators hypothesize that feature-selective brain regions act as neural feature dimension maps, and thus encode representations of salient location(s) based on their preferred feature dimension. The investigators will scan healthy human participants using functional MRI (fMRI) in a repeated-measures design while they view visual stimuli made salient based on different combinations of feature dimensions. The investigators will employ state-of-the-art multivariate analysis techniques that allow them to reconstruct an 'image' of the stimulus representation encoded by each brain region to dissect how neural tissue identifies salient locations. Each participant will perform a challenging task at the center of the screen to ensure they keep their eyes still and ignore the stimuli presented in the periphery, w

Primary Outcome

The investigators will use BOLD activation patterns measured from each retinotopic ROI to fit quantitative models of spatial encoding. These models will be used to reconstruct stimulus representations on experimental trials to quantify how stimulus representations are encoded in each brain region studied, and how these representations change across experimental manipulations. These measurements will be used to test the impact of stimulus manipulations on stimulus representations in different bra

Conditions Studied

Interventions

• OTHER Stimulus properties: salience-defining feature
• OTHER Stimulus properties: magnitude of salience

Study Locations (1)