The influence of attention on motion processing

The influence of attention on motion processing

Valeska Marija Stephan

Doctoral thesis

Date of Examination: 2012-10-25

Date of issue: 2013-10-25

Advisor: Treue, Stefan Prof. Dr.

Referee: Gail, Alexander Prof. Dr.

Referee: Fischer, Julia Prof. Dr.

Persistent Address: http://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-1735-0000-0001-BC02-6

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Abstract

English

This thesis examined the influences of attention on the processing of complex and simple motion stimuli. The work consists of two physiology studies. In the first study we investigated the question of how complex motion stimuli, namely transparent motion stimuli, are processed in area MT and the influence of attention on the processing. In our second study we were interested in attentional effects on visual motion stimuli in the primary visual cortex. We find a strong feature-based component which contributes to the processing of complex motion stimuli. Furthermore we show that effects of spatial attention influences spatial selectivity when processing simple motion stimuli in early visual processing stages.

Keywords: cognitive neuroscience, attention, transparent motion, primary visual cortex, area mt, spatial attention, feature-based attention