Responses of Leaky Integrate-and-Fire Neurons to a Plurality of Stimuli in Their Receptive Fields

A fundamental question concerning the way the visual world is represented in our brain is how a cortical cell responds when its classical receptive field contains a plurality of stimuli. Two opposing models have been proposed. In the response-averaging model, the neuron responds with a weighted average of all individual stimuli. By contrast, in the probability-mixing model, the cell responds to a plurality of stimuli as if only one of the stimuli were present. Here we apply the probability-mixing and the response-averaging model to leaky integrate-and-fire neurons, to describe neuronal behavior based on observed spike trains. We first estimate the parameters of either model using numerical methods, and then test which model is most likely to have generated the observed data. Results show that the parameters can be successfully estimated and the two models are distinguishable using model selection

Too little, too late: reduced visual span and speed characterize pure alexia

Whether normal word reading includes a stage of visual processing selectively dedicated to word or letter recognition is highly debated. Characterizing pure alexia, a seemingly selective disorder of reading, has been central to this debate. Two main theories claim either that 1) Pure alexia is caused by damage to a reading specific brain region in the left fusiform gyrus or 2) Pure alexia results from a general visual impairment that may particularly affect simultaneous processing of multiple items. We tested these competing theories in 4 patients with pure alexia using sensitive psychophysical measures and mathematical modeling. Recognition of single letters and digits in the central visual field was impaired in all patients. Visual apprehension span was also reduced for both letters and digits in all patients. The only cortical region lesioned across all 4 patients was the left fusiform gyrus, indicating that this region subserves a function broader than letter or word identification. We suggest that a seemingly pure disorder of reading can arise due to a general reduction of visual speed and span, and explain why this has a disproportionate impact on word reading while recognition of other visual stimuli are less obviously affected

Automatic Attraction of Visual Attention by Supraletter Features of Former Target Strings

Observers were trained to search for a particular horizontal string of 3 capital letters presented among similar strings consisting of exactly the same letters in different orders. The training was followed by a test in which the observers searched for a new target that was identical to one of the former distractors. The new distractor set consisted of the remaining former distractors plus the former target. On each trial, three letter-strings were displayed, which included the target string with a probability of .5. In Experiment 1, the strings were centered at different locations on the circumference of an imaginary circle around the fixation point. The training phase of Experiment 2 was similar, but in the test phase of the experiment, the strings were located in a vertical array centered on fixation, and in target-present arrays, the target always appeared at fixation. In both experiments, performance (d’) degraded on trials in which former targets were present, suggesting that the former targets automatically drew processing resources away from the current targets. Apparently, the two experiments showed automatic attraction of visual attention by supraletter features of former target strings