Spatial attention has been postulated to facilitate perceptual processing via several different mechanisms. For instance, attention can amplify neural responses in sensory areas (sensory gain), mediate neural variability (noise modulation), or alter the manner in which sensory signals are selectively read out by postsensory decision mechanisms (efficient readout). Even in the context of simple ...

Meso AI, Chemla S. Perceptual fields reveal previously hidden dynamics of human visual motion sensitivity. J Neurophysiol 114: 1360–1363, 2015. First published October 22, 2014; doi:10.1152/jn.00698.2014.—Motion sensitivity is a fundamental property of human vision. Although its neural correlates are normally only directly accessible with neurophysiological approaches, Neri (Neri P. J Neurosci ...

In typical perceptual learning experiments, one stimulus type (e.g., a bisection stimulus offset either to the left or right) is presented per trial. In roving, two different stimulus types (e.g., a 30' and a 20' wide bisection stimulus) are randomly interleaved from trial to trial. Roving can impair both perceptual learning and task sensitivity. Here, we investigate the relationship between th...

Recent studies have demonstrated that training adult amblyopes in simple visual tasks leads to significant improvements of their spatial vision. One critical question is: How much can training with one particular stimulus and task generalize to other stimuli and tasks? In this study, we estimated the bandwidth of perceptual learning in teenage and adult observers with anisometropic amblyopia an...

Previous research suggests an inverse relationship between human orientation discrimination sensitivity and tilt illusion magnitude. To test whether these perceptual functions are inherently linked, we measured both orientation discrimination sensitivity and the magnitude of the tilt illusion before and after participants had been trained for three days on an orientation discrimination task. Di...

A variety of psychophysical and neurophysiological studies suggest that chromatic motion perception in the primate brain may be performed outside the classical motion processing pathway. We addressed this provocative proposal directly by assessing the sensitivity of neurons in motion area MT to moving colored stimuli while simultaneously determining perceptual sensitivity in nonhuman primate ob...

Psycho-acoustic experiments show a perceptual asymmetry between tone and formant transitions in initial and final position: difference limens in end point frequency are significantly larger for transitions followed by a steady-state than preceded by one. Sensitivity of end point detection decreases as a result of auditory masking and/or a memory recency effect. The present paper describes how s...

The ability to focus one's attention underlies success in many everyday tasks, but voluntary attention cannot be sustained for extended periods of time. In the laboratory, sustained-attention failure is manifest as a decline in perceptual sensitivity with increasing time on task, known as the vigilance decrement. We investigated improvements in sustained attention with training (approximately 5...

Abstract Auditory scene analysis mechanisms are traditionally divided into “simultaneous” processes, which operate across frequency, and “sequential” processes, which bind sounds across time. In reality, simultaneous and sequential cues often coexist, and compete to determine perceived organization. Here, we study the respective influences of synchrony, a powerful grouping cue, and frequency pr...

Even though it is undisputed that prior information regarding the location of a target affects visual selection, the issue of whether information regarding nonspatial features, such as color and shape, has similar effects has been a matter of debate since the early 1980s. In the study described in this article, measures derived from signal detection theory were used to show that perceptual sens...