Neuronal interaction between spatial- and feature-based attention in visual object processing

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Matthias M. Müller
• Subject Area: General, Cognitive and Mathematical Psychology
• Term: since 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 414151260

Attention is the key mechanism to select behaviorally relevant stimuli out of the flood of possible information. Three basic selection principles, i.e. spatial-, object- and feature-based selection, were intensively investigated in the past. However, a closer look to the literature shows that these mechanisms were mostly explored in isolation with only a few attempts to discover similarities/dissimilarities or interactions between the three. Everyday experience teaches us that a constant shift between these selection principles is required to extract a coherent image of our environment. Therefore, it is surprising how little is known about the neural dynamics, coordination and interactions in this regard. On the basis of object-based attention, the proposed project will investigate the neural (temporal) dynamics when spatial- or feature-based selection criteria are applied. Own work has shown that attending to one task-relevant feature of an object does not automatically facilitate neural processing of the task-irrelevant feature that constitutes the object. Furthermore, in a different experiment we have shown that feature-based attention is obligatory and overwrites even task-demands. These and other experimental results lay ground of the proposed experiments to shed further light on the neural interactions and basic principles between object-, spatial- and feature-based selection. By means of our innovative stimulation technique, i.e. to present frequency-tagged stimuli that evoke steady state evoked potentials (SSVEPs) in the human EEG, we will be able to uncover basic neural dynamics in early visual cortex in competition for processing, including temporal dynamics thereof. The theoretical framework of all experiments is based on the "biased competition model" to explain competitive interactions.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: USA
• Cooperation Partner: Professor Dr. Steven A. Hillyard
• Co-Investigator: Professor Dr. Steffen Nestler