title: Attention in the real world: toward understanding its neural basis.
abstract: The efficient selection of behaviorally relevant objects from cluttered environments supports our everyday goals. Attentional selection has typically been studied in search tasks involving artificial and simplified displays. Although these studies have revealed important basic principles of attention, they do not explain how the brain efficiently selects familiar objects in complex and meaningful real-world scenes. Findings from recent neuroimaging studies indicate that real-world search is mediated by 'what' and 'where' attentional templates that are implemented in high-level visual cortex. These templates represent target-diagnostic properties and likely target locations, respectively, and are shaped by object familiarity, scene context, and memory. We propose a framework for real-world search that incorporates these recent findings and specifies directions for future study.
authors.affiliation: Center for Mind/Brain Sciences (CIMeC), University of Trento, Corso Bettini 31, 38068 Rovereto (TN), Italy. Electronic address: marius.peelen@unitn.it.
authors.forename: Marius V
authors.initials: MV
authors.lastname: Peelen
authors.affiliation: Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA; Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA.
authors.forename: Sabine
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kastner
mesh_terms: D001288:Attention; D006801:Humans; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D014793:Visual Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: attention; natural scenes; object perception; vision; visual search