title: Attentional enhancement of spatial resolution: linking behavioural and neurophysiological evidence.
abstract: Attention allows us to select relevant sensory information for preferential processing. Behaviourally, it improves performance in various visual tasks. One prominent effect of attention is the modulation of performance in tasks that involve the visual system's spatial resolution. Physiologically, attention modulates neuronal responses and alters the profile and position of receptive fields near the attended location. Here, we develop a hypothesis linking the behavioural and electrophysiological evidence. The proposed framework seeks to explain how these receptive field changes enhance the visual system's effective spatial resolution and how the same mechanisms may also underlie attentional effects on the representation of spatial information.
authors: Psychology & Neural Science, Meyer Building, 6 Washington Place, Room 970, New York University, New York, New York 10003, USA. kae258@nyu.edu
authors: Katharina
authors: K
authors: Anton-Erxleben
authors: Marisa
authors: M
authors: Carrasco
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D009949:Orientation / Q000502:physiology; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology*