Attentional reorienting as Bayesian updating
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1
University of Oxford, FMRIB Centre, United Kingdom
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2
University of Oxford, Department of Experimental Psychology, United Kingdom
When events in the external world are predictable, observers are able to build up a prior about what will happen next. For example, if participants must make eye movements to targets on a computer screen, and the location of these targets is predictable over time, the participants will develop a spatial prior which indicates where future targets are likely to occur. Visuo-spatial attention, as studied using (for example) the Posner task, may therefore be regarded in a Bayesian sense as a prior.
What happens when such a prior is violated – for example, a visual target appears in an unexpected location? Firstly, the participant must update his/her action plan to make an eye movement to the unexpected target location (outside the prior). Secondly, the participant may need to update the prior, to expect targets at a different location on future trials. In general, attentional reorienting has been studied in terms of the first process, responding to an unexpected stimulus (cf. work by Corbetta and colleagues). However, if attentional orienting is conceptualized as a Bayesian prior, then reorienting should perhaps be conceptualized as a Bayesian update. Violations of the prior can, but do not necessarily, result in such an update.
In the present experiment we attempted to distinguish these two processes – reprogramming of a current action, and updating of an action prior–using a simple eye movement task. Participants fixated on a central point on a computer screen. They were required to make eye movements to coloured dots that appeared in different locations (see Figure 1). The position of coloured dots was not random, but followed a Gaussian distribution, so participants were able to learn a prior about the targets’ positions. Two types of prior-violation trials were included. Firstly, every few trials, the spatial distribution of dots was changed. The colour of dots also changed at this point, clearly signaling to participants to start learning a new prior. Secondly, we included control trials on which participants had to reprogram their actions, but without learning a new prior– on these trials, a target appeared at a random location, but the target was coloured grey to indicate that it did not belong to a new distribution, but was a one‐off anomaly.
We found that different brain systems are involved in reprogramming actions and updating of an action prior. In particular, updating the prior, as opposed to simply reprogramming the current action, activated the anterior cingulate cortex (see Figure 2).
Keywords:
Bayesian decision theory,
Eye Movements,
fMRI,
visuo-spatial attention
Conference:
Neural Coding, Decision-Making & Integration in Time, Rauischholzhausen, Germany, 26 Apr - 29 Apr, 2012.
Presentation Type:
Poster Presentation
Topic:
Neural Coding, Decision-Making & Integration in Time
Citation:
O’Reilly
JX,
Schüffelgen
U,
Mars
RB,
Behrens
T and
Rushworth
M
(2012). Attentional reorienting as Bayesian updating.
Front. Neurosci.
Conference Abstract:
Neural Coding, Decision-Making & Integration in Time.
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnins.2012.86.00012
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Received:
12 Jan 2012;
Published Online:
16 Jan 2012.
*
Correspondence:
Dr. Jill X O’Reilly, University of Oxford, FMRIB Centre, Oxford, United Kingdom, jill.oreilly@clneuro.ox.ac.uk