![binocular strengths binocular strengths](https://www.boatus.org/assets/img/findings/35/chart.jpg)
Early studies of feature attention in the middle temporal area (MT) of primate visual cortex have suggested that the extent to which feature attention modulates a neuron's responses depends on the match between the value of a feature of the attended stimulus and a neuron's tuning preferences for that feature-the so-called “feature-similarity gain” (FSG) model ( Martinez-Trujillo and Treue 2004). Such a mechanism may facilitate visual search or difficult discriminations by enhancing the activity of relevant sensory neurons and suppressing that of irrelevant neurons ( Martinez-Trujillo and Treue 2004). Our results suggest that modulation by feature attention may depend not just on which features a neuron represents but also on how well the neuron represents those features.Īttention directed to a visual stimulus enhances the responses of sensory neurons that represent features of the attended stimulus, irrespective of the location of their receptive fields.
![binocular strengths binocular strengths](http://www.goodgamehunting.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/leica-10x42-geovid-hd-b.jpg)
We found that, as for direction, attention to stimuli containing binocular disparity cues modulated the responses of MT neurons and that the magnitude of the modulation depended on both a neuron's tuning preferences and its tuning strength. We measured how the effects of feature attention on MT neurons in rhesus monkeys ( Macaca mulatta) depended on the relationship between features-in our case, direction of motion and binocular disparity-of the attended stimulus and a neuron's tuning for those features. We hypothesized that if feature attention modulates neurons according to their tuning preferences, it should also be sensitive to their tuning strength, which is the magnitude of the difference in responses to preferred and null stimuli. This modulation renders the representation of sensory information across a neuronal population more selective for the features present in the attended stimulus (Martinez-Trujillo JC, Treue S. Attending to a stimulus modulates the responses of sensory neurons that represent features of that stimulus, a phenomenon named “feature attention.” For example, attending to a stimulus containing upward motion enhances the responses of upward-preferring direction-selective neurons in the middle temporal area (MT) and suppresses the responses of downward-preferring neurons, even when the attended stimulus is outside of the spatial receptive fields of the recorded neurons (Treue S, Martinez-Trujillo JC.