Perceptual learning to reduce sensory eye dominance beyond the focus of top-down visual attention.

ABSTRACT: Perceptual learning is an important means for the brain to maintain its agility in a dynamic environment. Top-down focal attention, which selects task-relevant stimuli against competing ones in the background, is known to control and select what is learned in adults. Still unknown, is whether the adult brain is able to learn highly visible information beyond the focus of top-down attention. If it is, we should be able to reveal a purely stimulus-driven perceptual learning occurring in functions that are largely determined by the early cortical level, where top-down attention modulation is weak. Such an automatic, stimulus-driven learning mechanism is commonly assumed to operate only in the juvenile brain. We performed perceptual training to reduce sensory eye dominance (SED), a function th

SUBMITTER: Xu JP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3175289 | biostudies-literature | 2012 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature