Combining attention networks increases visual awareness

Cortical networks involved in visual awareness independent of visual attention.

It is now well established that visual attention, as measured with standard spatial attention tasks, and visual awareness, as measured by report, can be dissociated. It is possible to attend to a stimulus with no reported awareness of the stimulus. We used a behavioral paradigm in which people were aware of a stimulus in one condition and unaware of it in another condition, but the stimulus dre...

Visual attention: Spotlights, highlights and visual awareness

The phenomenon of visual attention has long fascinated scientists interested in higher functions of the brain. Introspection suggests that attention exerts a powerful influence on the flow of visual information within our brains: everyone is familiar with the experience of attending so intently to a particular object in the visual world that he/she is oblivious to other salient stimuli present ...

3 . Visual Attention and Visual Awareness

Why visual attention and awareness are different.

Now that the study of consciousness is warmly embraced by cognitive scientists, much confusion seems to arise between the concepts of visual attention and visual awareness. Often, visual awareness is equated to what is in the focus of attention. There are, however, two sets of arguments to separate attention from awareness: a psychological/theoretical one and a neurobiological one. By combining...

Situation Awareness with the Limited Visual Attention

Situation awareness (SA) is the perception of the elements in the environment within a volume of time and space, the comprehension of their meaning, and the projection of their status in the near future (Endsley M. 1988). A critical aspect of the situation awareness (SA) problem is that agents must construct an overall view of a dynamically changing world using limited sensor channels. For inst...