Circuit Mechanisms of Selective Attention: Top-Down Enhancement of Visual Representation in the Brain

Attention is cognitive process of selective concentrating on important aspect of information in expense of ignoring other. Deliberate focalization on goal-related sensory inputs is a fundamental component of selective attention that enhances sensory representation in the brain. I will specifically discuss two separate sets of experiments: 1) we electrically stimulated the barn owl forebrain gaze area while recording neural responses to visual stimuli in midbrain; 2) we optogenetically stimulated feedback projections from visual area V4 to V1 while recording V1 responses to visual stimuli. I will discuss our findings about the way that top-down signal modulates responses in the lower visual areas.

Keywords:

Circuit mechanisms , Selective attention , Visual representation