title: Orientation saliency without visual cortex and target selection in archer fish.
abstract: Our visual attention is attracted by salient stimuli in our environment and affected by primitive features such as orientation, color, and motion. Perceptual saliency due to orientation contrast has been extensively demonstrated in behavioral experiments with humans and other primates and is believed to be facilitated by the functional organization of the primary visual cortex. In behavioral experiments with the archer fish, a proficient hunter with remarkable visual abilities, we found an orientation saliency effect similar to that observed in human subjects. Given the enormous evolutionary distance between humans and archer fish, our findings suggest that orientation-based saliency constitutes a fundamental building block for efficient visual information processing.
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Science, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva 84105, Israel.
authors.forename: Alik
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Mokeichev
authors.forename: Ronen
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Segev
authors.forename: Ohad
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Ben-Shahar
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D006801:Humans; D008606:Mental Processes / Q000502:physiology; D009949:Orientation / Q000502:physiology*; D010473:Perciformes / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011235:Predatory Behavior / Q000502:physiology; D013045:Species Specificity; D014793:Visual Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology