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Temporal structure and dynamic neural mechanism in visual attention

JIA Jian-Rong^1,2,3,4, FANG Fang^1,2,3,4, LUO Huan^1,2,3,*

¹School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences and Beijing Key Laboratory of Behavior and Mental Health, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China；²PKU-IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China；³Key Laboratory of Machine Perception (Ministry of Education), Peking University, Beijing 100871, China；⁴Peking-Tsinghua Center for Life Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China

Abstract

Attention shapes what we see and what we act upon by allocating limited resources to certain parts of visual display in a selective and adaptive manner. While most previous studies in visual attention mainly focused on the attentional distribution over space or features, recent studies have revealed that temporal dynamics also plays a crucial function in visual attention. This paper reviews the representation, function and neural mechanism of temporal dynamics in visual attention from the following four aspects: (1) Tracking dynamic structure of external stimulus by attention; (2) Intrinsic dynamic characteristics of attention; (3) Time-based multiple object representation; (4) Relationship between visual dynamics and classical attentional phenomena. We propose that the dynamic structure and temporal organization are fundamental to visual attention, and the research on it might provide new solutions to many unresolved issues in visual attention research.

Key words: visual attention; temporal structure; temporal organization; neuronal oscillation; behavioral oscillation; multiple object attention

Received: 2018-05-08　　Accepted: 2018-07-12

Corresponding author: 罗欢　　E-mail: huan.luo@pku.edu.cn

DOI: 10.13294/j.aps.2018.0100

Citing This Article：

JIA Jian-Rong, FANG Fang, LUO Huan. Temporal structure and dynamic neural mechanism in visual attention. Acta Physiol Sin 2019; 71 (1): 1-10 (in Chinese with English abstract).