Question

Discuss the role that attention plays in binding together visual information that, due to at least some degree of modular processing, is both physically and logically separate in the brain. Among other things, discuss how Treisman’s feature integration theory and evidence of synchronous neural activity relate.

Answer 1

One of the cognitive and behavioral process of selective concentration on a discrete aspect of information is referred to as attention. Visual attention operates as a two stage process .

Stage 1:

Attention gets distributed uniformly over the external visual scene, whereas information process is performed in parallel to it.

Stage 2:

In this stage, attention is focused to a specific area of the visual scene and thus processing is performed in a serail method.

The theory of attention is developed in 1980 by Anne Treisman and Garry Gelade. This theory has been one of the most influential psycological models of visual attention.

Treisman explains the concept as different stages

* Preattentive Stage:

In this stage, brain collects all the information about the basic features such as shapes, colour available in the visual field. The idea that the features are automatically separated appears to be counterintuitive.

*Focused Attention Stage:

In this stage, a subject combines the individual features of an object, therby perceiving the whole object. Combining these individual features of an object requires attention.

Also there are two kinds of visual search task i.e., feature serach and the conjunction search. Feature search can be performed pre-attentively and quickly for targets defined by one particular feature such as shape, colour, movement etc. These features hsould be able to form illusionary conjunctions . Conjunction search is much slower than a feature serach that requires continuous and consious attention and effort. Hereby Treisman concluded that colour, orientation and intensity are the features for which feature seraches can be performed.

Hence accumulating evidence suggests that the synchronization of the of neuronal activity plays a very important role in memory formation. There are also studies which have demonstrated that the enhanced synchronous activity among the medial temporal lobe is interrelated with the increased memory performance.

Hence all these studies clearly relate Treisman’s feature integration theory and the evidence synchronous neural activity