Attention alters orientation processing in the human lateral geniculate nucleus
Nature Neuroscience (2015)
Sam Ling, Michael Pratte & Frank Tong
Orientation selectivity is a cornerstone property of vision, commonly believed to emerge in the primary visual cortex (V1). Here, we demonstrate that reliable orientation information can be detected even earlier, in the human lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN), and that attentional feedback selectively alters these orientation responses. This attentional modulation may allow the visual system to modify incoming feature-specific signals at the earliest possible processing site.
