Feature-based attention enables robust, long-lasting location transfer in human perceptual learning.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Hung SC
PROVIDER: S-EPMC8260789 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Similar Datasets
Project description:Perceptual skills can be improved through practice on a perceptual task, even in adulthood. Visual perceptual learning is known to be mostly specific to the trained retinal location, which is considered as evidence of neural plasticity in retinotopic early visual cortex. Recent findings demonstrate that transfer of learning to untrained locations can occur under some specific training procedures. Here, we evaluated whether exogenous attention facilitates transfer of perceptual learning to untrained locations, both adjacent to the trained locations (Experiment 1) and distant from them (Experiment 2). The results reveal that attention facilitates transfer of perceptual learning to untrained locations in both experiments, and that this transfer occurs both within and across visual hemifields. These findings show that training with exogenous attention is a powerful regime that is able to overcome the major limitation of location specificity.
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Project description:How are features integrated (bound) into objects and how can this process be facilitated? Here we investigated the role of rapid perceptual learning in feature binding and its long-lasting effects. By isolating thecontributions of individual features from their conjunctionsbetween training and test displays, we demonstrate for the first time that training can rapidly and substantially improve feature binding. Observers trained on a conjunction search task consisting of a rapid display with one target-conjunction, then tested with a new target-conjunction. Features were the same between training and test displays. Learning transferred to the new target when its conjunction was presented as a distractor, but not when only its component features were presented in different conjunction distractors during training. Training improvement lasted for up to 16months, but, in all conditions, it was specific to the trained target. Our findings suggest that with short training observers' ability to bind two specific features into an object is improved, and that this learning effect can last for over a year. Moreover, our findings show that while the short-term learning effect reflects activation of presented items and their binding, long-term consolidation is task specific.
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Project description:Training can modify the visual system to produce a substantial improvement on perceptual tasks and therefore has applications for treating visual deficits. Visual perceptual learning (VPL) is often specific to the trained feature, which gives insight into processes underlying brain plasticity, but limits VPL's effectiveness in rehabilitation. Under what circumstances VPL transfers to untrained stimuli is poorly understood. Here we report a qualitatively new phenomenon: intrinsic variation in the representation of features determines the transfer of VPL. Orientations around cardinal are represented more reliably than orientations around oblique in V1, which has been linked to behavioral consequences such as visual search asymmetries. We studied VPL for visual search of near-cardinal or oblique targets among distractors of the other orientation while controlling for other display and task attributes, including task precision, task difficulty, and stimulus exposure. Learning was the same in all training conditions; however, transfer depended on the orientation of the target, with full transfer of learning from near-cardinal to oblique targets but not the reverse. To evaluate the idea that representational reliability was the key difference between the orientations in determining VPL transfer, we created a model that combined orientation-dependent reliability, improvement of reliability with learning, and an optimal search strategy. Modeling suggested that not only search asymmetries but also the asymmetric transfer of VPL depended on preexisting differences between the reliability of near-cardinal and oblique representations. Transfer asymmetries in model behavior also depended on having different learning rates for targets and distractors, such that greater learning for low-reliability distractors facilitated transfer. These findings suggest that training on sensory features with intrinsically low reliability may maximize the generalizability of learning in complex visual environments.
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Project description:A large body of literature has examined specificity and transfer of perceptual learning, suggesting a complex picture. Here, we distinguish between transfer over variations in a "task-relevant" feature (e.g., transfer of a learned orientation task to a different reference orientation) and transfer over a "task-irrelevant" feature (e.g., transfer of a learned orientation task to a different retinal location or different spatial frequency), and we focus on the mechanism for the latter. Experimentally, we assessed whether learning a judgment of one feature (such as orientation) using one value of an irrelevant feature (e.g., spatial frequency) transfers to another value of the irrelevant feature. Experiment 1 examined whether learning in eight-alternative orientation identification with one or multiple spatial frequencies transfers to stimuli at five different spatial frequencies. Experiment 2 paralleled Experiment 1, examining whether learning in eight-alternative spatial-frequency identification at one or multiple orientations transfers to stimuli with five different orientations. Training the orientation task with a single spatial frequency transferred widely to all other spatial frequencies, with a tendency to specificity when training with the highest spatial frequency. Training the spatial frequency task fully transferred across all orientations. Computationally, we extended the identification integrated reweighting theory (I-IRT) to account for the transfer data (Dosher, Liu, & Lu, 2023; Liu, Dosher, & Lu, 2023). Just as location-invariant representations in the original IRT explain transfer over retinal locations, incorporating feature-invariant representations effectively accounted for the observed transfer. Taken together, we suggest that feature-invariant representations can account for transfer of learning over a "task-irrelevant" feature.
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Project description:Making informed decisions in noisy environments requires integrating sensory information over time. However, recent work has suggested that it may be difficult to determine whether an animal's decision-making strategy relies on evidence integration or not. In particular, strategies based on extrema-detection or random snapshots of the evidence stream may be difficult or even impossible to distinguish from classic evidence integration. Moreover, such non-integration strategies might be surprisingly common in experiments that aimed to study decisions based on integration. To determine whether temporal integration is central to perceptual decision-making, we developed a new model-based approach for comparing temporal integration against alternative 'non-integration' strategies for tasks in which the sensory signal is composed of discrete stimulus samples. We applied these methods to behavioral data from monkeys, rats, and humans performing a variety of sensory decision-making tasks. In all species and tasks, we found converging evidence in favor of temporal integration. First, in all observers across studies, the integration model better accounted for standard behavioral statistics such as psychometric curves and psychophysical kernels. Second, we found that sensory samples with large evidence do not contribute disproportionately to subject choices, as predicted by an extrema-detection strategy. Finally, we provide a direct confirmation of temporal integration by showing that the sum of both early and late evidence contributed to observer decisions. Overall, our results provide experimental evidence suggesting that temporal integration is an ubiquitous feature in mammalian perceptual decision-making. Our study also highlights the benefits of using experimental paradigms where the temporal stream of sensory evidence is controlled explicitly by the experimenter, and known precisely by the analyst, to characterize the temporal properties of the decision process.
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Project description:Mass spectrometry (MS)-based proteomics continues to evolve rapidly, opening more and more application areas. The scale of data generated on novel instrumentation and acquisition strategies pose a challenge to bioinformatic analysis. Search engines need to make optimal use of the data for biological discoveries while remaining statistically rigorous, transparent and performant. Here we present alphaDIA, a modular open-source search framework for data independent acquisition (DIA) proteomics. We developed a feature-free identification algorithm particularly suited for detecting patterns in data produced by sensitive time-of-flight instruments. It naturally adapts to novel, more efficient scan modes that are not yet accessible to previous algorithms. Rigorous benchmarking demonstrates competitive identification and quantification performance. While supporting empirical spectral libraries, we propose a new search strategy named end-to-end transfer learning using fully predicted libraries. This entails continuously optimizing a deep neural network for predicting machine and experiment specific properties, enabling the generic DIA analysis of any post-translational modification (PTM). AlphaDIA provides a high performance and accessible framework running locally or in the cloud, opening DIA analysis to the community.
2024-06-24 | MSV000095138 | MassIVE
Project description:Visual perceptual learning (VPL) refers to a long-term enhancement of visual task performance as a result of visual experience [1-6]. VPL is generally specific for the trained visual feature, meaning that training on a feature leads to performance enhancement only on the feature and those in its close vicinity. In the meantime, visual perception is often categorical [7-10]. This may partially be because the ecological importance of a stimulus is usually determined by the category to which the stimulus belongs (e.g., snake, lightning, and fish) [11]. Thus, it would be advantageous to an observer if encountering or working on a feature from a category increases sensitivity to features under the same category. However, studies of VPL have used uncategorized features. Here, we found a category-induced transfer of VPL, where VPL of an orientation transferred to untrained orientations within the same category as the trained orientation, but not orientations from the different category. Furthermore, we found that, although category learning transferred to other locations in the visual field, the category-induced transfer of VPL occurred only when visual stimuli for the category learning and those for VPL training were presented at the same location. These results altogether suggest that feature specificity in VPL is greatly influenced by cognitive processing, such as categorization in a top-down fashion. In an environment where features are categorically organized, VPL may be more generalized across features under the same category. Such generalization implies that VPL is of more ecological significance than has been thought.
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Project description:Speech perception performance for degraded speech can improve with practice or exposure. Such perceptual learning is thought to be reliant on attention and theoretical accounts like the predictive coding framework suggest a key role for attention in supporting learning. However, it is unclear whether speech perceptual learning requires undivided attention. We evaluated the role of divided attention in speech perceptual learning in two online experiments (N = 336). Experiment 1 tested the reliance of perceptual learning on undivided attention. Participants completed a speech recognition task where they repeated forty noise-vocoded sentences in a between-group design. Participants performed the speech task alone or concurrently with a domain-general visual task (dual task) at one of three difficulty levels. We observed perceptual learning under divided attention for all four groups, moderated by dual-task difficulty. Listeners in easy and intermediate visual conditions improved as much as the single-task group. Those who completed the most challenging visual task showed faster learning and achieved similar ending performance compared to the single-task group. Experiment 2 tested whether learning relies on domain-specific or domain-general processes. Participants completed a single speech task or performed this task together with a dual task aiming to recruit domain-specific (lexical or phonological), or domain-general (visual) processes. All secondary task conditions produced patterns and amount of learning comparable to the single speech task. Our results demonstrate that the impact of divided attention on perceptual learning is not strictly dependent on domain-general or domain-specific processes and speech perceptual learning persists under divided attention.
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Project description:Current treatments for infantile nystagmus (IN), focused on dampening the oscillating eye movements, yield little to no improvement in visual functioning. It makes sense, however, to treat the visual impairments associated with IN with tailored sensory training. Recently, we developed such a training, targeting visual crowding as an important bottleneck in visual functioning with an eye-movement engaging letter discrimination task. This training improved visual performance of children with IN, but most children had not reached plateau performance after 10 supervised training sessions (3,500 trials). Here, we evaluate the effects of prolonged perceptual learning (14,000 trials) in 7-18-year-old children with IN and test the feasibility of tablet-based, at-home intervention. Results demonstrate that prolonged home-based perceptual training results in stable, long lasting visual acuity improvements at distance and near, with remarkably good transfer to reading and even stereopsis. Improvements on self-reported functional vision scores underline the clinical relevance of perceptual learning with e-health apps for individuals with IN.
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Project description:The sense of vision allows us to discriminate fine details across a wide range of tasks. How to improve this perceptual skill, particularly within a short training session, is of substantial interest. Emerging evidence suggests that mixing easy trials can quickly improve performance in hard trials, but it is equivocal whether the improvement is short-lived or long-lasting, and additionally what accounts for this improvement. Here, by tracking objective performance (accuracy) and subjective experience (ratings of target visibility and choice confidence) over time and in a large sample of participants, we demonstrate the coexistence of transient and sustained effects of mixing easy trials, which differ markedly in their timescales, in their effects on subjective awareness, and in individual differences. In particular, whereas the transient effect was found to be ubiquitous and manifested similarly across objective and subjective measures, the sustained effect was limited to a subset of participants with weak convergence from objective and subjective measures. These results indicate that mixture of easy trials enables two distinct, co-existing forms of rapid perceptual improvements in hard trials, as mediated by robust priming and fragile learning. Placing constraints on theory of brain plasticity, this finding may also have implications for alleviating visual deficits.
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