title: Mechanisms of perceptual organization provide auto-zoom and auto-localization for attention to objects.
abstract: Visual attention is often understood as a modulatory field acting at early stages of processing, but the mechanisms that direct and fit the field to the attended object are not known. We show that a purely spatial attention field propagating downward in the neuronal network responsible for perceptual organization will be reshaped, repositioned, and sharpened to match the object's shape and scale. Key features of the model are grouping neurons integrating local features into coherent tentative objects, excitatory feedback to the same local feature neurons that caused grouping neuron activation, and inhibition between incompatible interpretations both at the local feature level and at the object representation level.
authors.affiliation: Krieger Mind/Brain Institute and Department of Neuroscience, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA.
authors.forename: Stefan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Mihalas
authors.forename: Yi
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Dong
authors.forename: Rüdiger
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: von der Heydt
authors.forename: Ernst
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Niebur
mesh_terms: D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008959:Models, Neurological; D009474:Neurons / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*