Category Learning Selectively Enhances Representations of Boundary-Adjacent Exemplars in Early Visual Cortex.

Category learning and visual perception are fundamentally interactive processes, such that successful categorization often depends on the ability to make fine visual discriminations between stimuli that vary on continuously valued dimensions. Research suggests that category learning can improve perceptual discrimination along the stimulus dimensions that predict category membership and that these perceptual enhancements are a byproduct of functional plasticity in the visual system. However, the precise mechanisms underlying learning-dependent sensory modulation in categorization are not well understood.

The Involvement of the Multiple Demand and Default Mode Networks in a Trial-by-Trial Cognitive Control.

Adaptive behavior in the environment requires a high level of cognitive control to bias limited processing resources to behaviorally significant stimuli. Such control has been associated with a set of brain regions located in the fronto-parietal cortex (multiple demand network), whose activity was found to increase as the control demand for a task increases. In contrast, another set of regions, default mode network regions, were found to be deactivated during top-down processing of task stimuli.

Cue frequency modulates cuing effect either in the presence or in the absence of distractors.

A novel, salient stimulus, even though it is not related to a concurrent goal-directed behavior, powerfully captures people's attention. While this stimulus-driven attentional capture has long been presumed to take place in a purely bottom-up or automatic manner, growing evidence shows that a number of top-down factors modulate the stimulus-driven capture of attention. Recent studies pointed out the cue presentation frequency is such a factor; the capture of attention by a salient, task-irrelevant cue increased as its presentation frequency decreased.

The perceptual enhancement by spatial attention is impaired during the attentional blink.

A salient, but task-irrelevant stimulus has long been known to capture attention in an automatic, involuntary manner. However, the automaticity of involuntary attention has recently been challenged. While some studies showed that the effect of involuntary attention depended on top-down attentional resources, other studies did not.

Working Memory-Driven Attention in Real-World Search.

People's attention is well attracted to stimuli matching their working memory. This memory-driven attentional capture has been demonstrated in simplified and controlled laboratory settings. The present study investigated whether working memory contents capture attention in a setting that closely resembles real-world environment.

Neural substrates of purely endogenous, self-regulatory control of attention.

Stimulus-driven orienting of attention toward a novel, salient stimulus is a highly adaptive behavior. In an opposing vein, it is also crucial to endogenously redirect attention to other stimuli of behavioral significance if the attended stimulus was evaluated to be unimportant. This stimulus-driven orienting and subsequent reorienting of attention are known to be mediated by similar neural substrates.