An effect of triazolam on visual attention and information processing

In this PhD project, the functions of cortical regions that control smooth pursuit eye movements (SPEM) and visual attention were investigated. Combining behavioural (eye movement) measurements and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) the cortical areas participating in the processing of visual information and motor information were investigated. Overlapping cortical Blood Oxygen Level Dependency (BOLD) activations might indicate where the transformation of visual input information into a motor output response takes place. Furthermore, the influence of visual attention on these mechanisms was studied. In a third step, the location and function of subregions of the motion sensitive MT+ complex – which plays a crucial role in the control of SPEM – was explored in more detail. In the final experiment, functional differences between regions of the SPEM network during the processing of visual motion by varying the amount of coherently moving target dots were investigated. In the first study it was shown that visual information processing takes place in the posterior parietal cortex (PPC) and MT+ and that oculomotor output processing takes place in the frontal eye fields (FEF), the supplementary eye fields (SEF), the cingulate gyrus and precuneus in addition to the above mentioned areas. Possible transformation sites were found in MT+ and within the PPC. In the second study it was shown that processing of visual attention during SPEM is fully integrated in the SPEM network, but certain aspects of the control of attention like the dissociation of attention from gaze are especially processed in the PPC. Furthermore it was shown that the ‘premotor theory’ of Rizzolatti (1984) is also valid for SPEM. In the third study two subregions of the motion sensitive MT+ complex, MST (medial superior temporal) and MT (middle temporal), were identified on group level. In contrast to monkey studies in the current study the eccentricity of the flow field relative to the midline played a minor role for the location of the MT+ subregions. These results question the assumed size of MT receptive fields in humans. The fourth study revealed that the visual input signal is modulated by retinal information whereas the oculomotor output is modulated by the eye movement signal or a mixture of visual and oculomotor information. Integration of visual and oculomotor information seems to take place in MST and visual areas V7/LOP. Processing of differential motion of eye and background appears to take place in the PPC. Surprisingly PPC hardly reacted if eye and background moved in phase. Primary visual area V1 probably receives eye movement signals. Its functional connections and exact functional role need further investigation.

A birth cohort observational study to assess the association of prenatal biomarkers of organophosphates with visual attention, recognition memory and information processing among Thai infants

In this study, systemic neurophysiological and neuropsychological mechanisms providing processing of visual information in subjects suffering from auditory deprivation were examined. In 30 men (21 to 25 year old) with complete congenital deafness and 30 control normally hearing men of the same age (groups D and C, respectively), cortical visual evoked potentials (VEPs, photostimulation of the right and left eyes by LED flashes, recording from the O1 and O2 loci) and neurodynamic characteristics of processing of visual information within the go/nogo/go paradigm were analyzed. Under conditions of the respective tests, all indices that characterize processing of simple visual information in deaf subjects (including number of processed stimuli, minimum exposure of the signal, and number of errors) were significantly worse than in the control group. It was also found that median values of the latency of the early VEP components (P1, N1, and P2) in group D were significantly smaller than the respective values in group C. At the same time, median latencies of the late VEP waves (N2 and P3) in deaf subjects were significantly greater than the analogous C-group values. Median values of the peak-to-peak amplitudes of all, with no exceptions, VEP components in group D were significantly (two times or even more) smaller than those in control subjects. Patterns of correlations between the indices of visual information processing and time/amplitude parameters of visual VEPs in the examined groups noticeably differed from each other. Thus, specific brain mechanisms responsible for processing of visual information in persons with auditory deprivation and with normal hearing demonstrate significant dissimilarity; central mechanisms of the visual system in deaf subjects undergo considerable cross-modality modifications.

It is recognized that the internal mechanisms for visual information processing are based on semantic inferences where visual information is represented and processed as visual semantic objects rather than direct images or episode pictures in the long-term memory. This article presents a cognitive informatics theory of visual information and knowledge processing in the brain. A set of cognitive principles of visual perception is reviewed particularly the classic gestalt principles, the cognitive informatics principles, and the hypercolumn theory. A visual frame theory is developed to explain the visual information processing mechanisms of human vision, where the size of a unit visual frame is tested and calibrated based on vision experiments. The framework of human visual information processing is established in order to elaborate mechanisms of visual information processing and the compatibility of internal representations between visual and abstract information and knowledge in the brain.

It is recognized that the internal mechanisms for visual information processing are based on semantic inferences where visual information is represented and processed as visual semantic objects rather than direct images or episode pictures in the long-term memory. This article presents a cognitive informatics theory of visual information and knowledge processing in the brain. A set of cognitive principles of visual perception is reviewed particularly the classic gestalt principles, the cognitive informatics principles, and the hypercolumn theory. A visual frame theory is developed to explain the visual information processing mechanisms of human vision, where the size of a unit visual frame is tested and calibrated based on vision experiments. The framework of human visual information processing is established in order to elaborate mechanisms of visual information processing and the compatibility of internal representations between visual and abstract information and knowledge in the brain.

In visual perception and information processing, a cascade of associations is hypothesized to flow from the structure of the visual stimulus to neural activity along the retinogeniculostriate visual system to behavior and action. Do visual perception and information processing adhere to this cascade near the beginning of life? To date, this three-stage hypothetical cascade has not been comprehensively tested in infants. In two related experiments, we attempted to expose this cascade in 6-month-old infants. Specifically, we presented infants with two levels of visual stimulus intensity, we measured electrical activity at the infant cortex, and we assessed infants’ preferential looking behavior. Chromatic saturation provided a convenient stimulus dimension to test the cascade because greater saturation is known to excite increased activity in the primate visual system and is generally hypothesized to stimulate visual preference. Experiment 1 revealed that infants prefer (look longer) at the more saturated of two colors otherwise matched in hue and brightness. Experiment 2 showed increased aggregate neural cortical excitation in infants (and adults) to the more saturated of the same pair of colors. Thus, experiments 1 and 2 taken together confirm a cascade: Visual stimulation of relatively greater intensity evokes relatively greater levels of bioelectrical cortical activity which in turn is associated with relatively greater visual attention. As this cascade obtains near the beginning of life, it helps to account for early visual preferences and visual information processing.

Cause or consequence? Alpha oscillations in visuospatial attention

Effect of acute hypoglycemia on visual information processing in adults with type 1 diabetes mellitus

The effect of triazolam on visual attention and information processing

This paper presents a cognitive informatics theory of visual information and knowledge processing in the brain and natural intelligence. A set of cognitive principles of visual perception is reviewed, such as the gestalt principles, the cognitive informatics principles, and the hypercolumn theory. A visual frame theory is developed to explain the visual information processing mechanisms of human vision, where the size of a unit visual frame is tested and calibrated based on vision experiments. Then, the framework of human visual information processing is established. Based on it, the mechanisms of visual information processing and the compatibility of internal representations between visual and abstract information and knowledge are elaborated.

Flying insects encounter a considerable amount of multisensorial information during their first foraging trip and need to extract and process relevant cues to efficiently navigate their environment and locate food sources. Previous studies used static stimuli to investigate visual information processing during flight and the role of floral features on detection, landing, and flower handling behaviours. However, bees come across visual information sequentially, while sampling the visual scene and presenting visual features that change after landing would allow further understanding of the chronological aspect of visual information processing. Here, we describe a new methodology that uses the ShadowSense™ Multitouch technology to present interactive floral displays where a change in visual features is triggered upon a bee's landing. Two colonies of flower naïve bumblebees (Bombus impatiens) were exposed to unicoloured and bicoloured unrewarded floral images in which floral guides in the form of dummy stamens were added, removed, or remained unchanged in the centre upon landing. Our findings confirm preference by flower‐naïve bumblebees for bicoloured flowers and corroborate that small central visual guides direct the place of landing. Therefore, we establish proof‐of‐concept of this new methodology for bee research by reproducing previously demonstrated behaviours and by reporting that bees react to a change in visual information on the touchscreen. To our knowledge, this is the first research providing a touchscreen technology that can reliably be used with bees. While its efficiency with similar‐sized insects is yet to be confirmed, this technology provides new approaches for research on visual information processing as well as various behaviours in insects.

This paper analyzes the parallel and serial information processing structure of visual system and proposes a visual information processing model with three layers: visual receptor layer, visual information conduction and relay layer, and information processing layer of visual information computing and processing area. Based on the analysis, abstraction, and simplification of the biological prototype of each layer in the visual system, a framework model of an artificial neural system corresponding to the visual system is proposed. An artificial neural network model is proposed to simulate the mechanism of visual attention. A network model is formed by introducing the saliency mask map as additional information on the benchmark network, and the selective enhancement operation is performed on the extracted features in different regions according to the mask map. The experimental results show that the visual computing processing network model can effectively improve the classification performance of the network when the appropriate saliency mask is used. The visual information computing and processing model network can work effectively for different data sets and different structures of the benchmark network, which is a universal network model. The complexity of visual information computing and processing model network is very small, and the improvement of network performance is not at the cost of increasing model complexity, but in the way of improving network efficiency. The performance of artificial neural network visual information computation and processing model is directly related to the performance of saliency map used as mask map.

In previous studies of human information processing, the visual separate system and the auditory separate system have been frequently studied. However, human related characteristic between visual and auditory systems has not been investigated substantially. If the mechanisms of human visual and auditory parallel information processing are elucidated, the finding will contribute to improving technical systems. In our previous studies, human related characteristic between visual search and speech perception is studied. The results showed the mutual effect between visual information processing and auditory information processing in the visual and the auditory parallel information processing. However, to clarify the cause of many car accidents lies in the use of car-phone on driving, it is necessary to use the same kind of visual and auditory stimuli in psychological experiments. In this paper, characteristic of reaction time in parallel information processing of human visual and auditory system is measured by using the same kind of stimuli. The experimental results show the factors that influence the visual and the auditory reaction time are the difficulty of the visual and the auditory stimuli and the timing of the visual and the auditory inputs. The experimental results also suggest that one of the causes of car accidents (to use car-phone while driving) is that the human visual information processing is affected by the auditory information.

Information processing and reading competencies in hydrocephalic children

Unveiling the mystery of visual information processing in human brain