Anne Treisman Lecture: Attention shapes perception

Visual attention is essential for visual perception. Spatial attention allows us to grant priority in processing and selectively process information at a given location. In this talk, I will present: (1) psychophysical experiments investigating how endogenous (voluntary) and exogenous (involuntary) covert attention alter tasks mediated by basic visual dimensions as well as their featural representations; (2) neuroimaging (fMRI) experiments differentiating effects of endogenous and exogenous attention on occipital cortex; (3) neurostimulation experiments establishing that transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) on occipital cortex extinguishes the effects of exogenous attention but not those of endogenous attention. Together these studies reveal how endogenous and exogenous attention shape perception by altering the processing of basic visual dimensions.

Marisa Carrasco investigates visual perception and attention, using human psychophysics, neuroimaging, neurostimulation, and computational modeling to study the relation between the psychological and neural mechanisms involved in these processes. Her research has revealed how attention modulates perceptual performance and alters appearance in a variety of visual tasks. 

 About the AnnE Treisman Lectures

Anne Marie Treisman (1935 – 2018) was a renowned member of our department and this annual talk was created to honour the impact of her work. Find out more on this webpage.

TO JOIN THE TALK

 You can access the Zoom link via OxTalks at https://talks.ox.ac.uk/talks/series/id/8f6c72b3-bff6-457b-84e8-72402c6cbbd3. Or, email us at hod.office@psy.ox.ac.uk to request the link.