BioSystems 89 (2007) 208–215 A neural model of feature attention in motion perception Pierre Bayerl ∗ , Heiko Neumann 1 University of Ulm, Department of Neural Information Processing, Oberer Eselsberg, D-89069 Ulm, Germany Received 24 November 2005; accepted 18 April 2006 Abstract We utilize a model of motion perception to link a physiological study of feature attention in cortical motion processing to a psychophysical experiment of motion perception. We explain effects of feature attention by modulatory excitation of neural activity patterns in a framework of biased competition. Our model allows us to qualitatively replicate physiological data concerning attentional modulation and to generate model behavior in a decision experiment that is consistent with psychophysical observations. Furthermore, our investigation makes predictions for future psychophysical experiments. © 2006 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Feature attention; Biased competition; Motion perception; Neural modeling 1. Introduction Cortical motion processing is confronted with the problem of reliably estimating motion cues and to inte- grate them into consistent object related interpretations. Processes of attention help to increase the separation of localized features in order to group them together forming coherent object motions. In this work we build upon and further extend a neural model of cortical motion perception to link the outcome of experimental studies resulting from different investigations. Our stud- ies combine experimental evidence concerning feature attention from electrophysiological and psychophysical observations. The proposed model makes further testable predictions that can be verified in future experiments. ∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +49 731 50 24157; fax: +49 731 50 24156. E-mail addresses: pierre.bayerl@uni-ulm.de (P. Bayerl), heiko.neumann@uni-ulm.de (H. Neumann). 1 Tel.: +49 731 50 24158; fax: +49 731 50 24156. 1.1. Feature attention Feature-based attention in early vision describes the deployment of attentional load to a specific feature irre- spective of its spatial location, such as, e.g., motion direction (Martinez-Trujillo and Treue, 2004; Treue and Martinez-Trujillo, 1999) or orientation (Reynolds and Chelazzi, 2004). This type of attention selection is distinguished from spatial, or location-based, atten- tion where information is expected at some location irrelevant of the feature and from object-based atten- tion that is assumed to operate on chunks of already grouped features that form individual objects (Blaser et al., 2000). In this work we focus on feature attention. 2 In the following we outline two experimental studies, which investigate the effect of feature attention in motion perception. 2 Furthermore, our modeling framework also allows spatial attention to be included (not further investigated in this paper). 0303-2647/$ – see front matter © 2006 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.biosystems.2006.04.018