Online decoding of object-based attention using real-time fMRI.
Visual attention is used to selectively filter relevant information depending on current task demands and goals. Visual attention is called object-based attention when it is directed to coherent forms or objects in the visual field. This study used real-time functional magnetic resonance imaging for moment-to-moment decoding of attention to spatially overlapped objects belonging to two different object categories. First, a whole-brain classifier was trained on pictures of faces and places. Subjects then saw transparently overlapped pictures of a face and a place, and attended to only one of them while ignoring the other. The category of the attended object, face or place, was decoded on a scan-by-scan basis using the previously trained decoder. The decoder performed at 77.6% accuracy indicating that despite competing bottom-up sensory input, object-based visual attention biased neural patterns towards that of the attended object. Furthermore, a comparison between different classification approaches indicated that the representation of faces and places is distributed rather than focal. This implies that real-time decoding of object-based attention requires a multivariate decoding approach that can detect these distributed patterns of cortical activity.
Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen, NL 6500, HE, Nijmegen, The Netherlands; Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Twente, NL 7500, AE, Enschede, The Netherlands.
Adnan M
AM
Niazi
Philip L C
PL
van den Broek
Stefan
S
Klanke
Markus
M
Barth
Mannes
M
Poel
Peter
P
Desain
Marcel A J
MA
van Gerven
D000328:Adult; D001108:Architecture; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping / Q000379:methods*; D016000:Cluster Analysis; D005145:Face; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D008297:Male; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted; D013997:Time Factors; D055815:Young Adult
categorization; multivariate decoding; object-based attention; real-time fMRI