A computational approach to the covert and overt deployment of spatial attention

TL;DR

This paper presents a computational model that simulates how spatial attention is deployed in the visual system, incorporating the influence of eye movements and neural overlaps, using local and distributed calculations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel computational approach that models attention deployment with or without eye movements, emphasizing neural and computational overlaps.

Findings

Model successfully simulates attention deployment dynamics.

Highlights the role of eye movements in attention control.

Provides a framework integrating neural substrates and computational mechanisms.

Abstract

Popular computational models of visual attention tend to neglect the influence of saccadic eye movements whereas it has been shown that the primates perform on average three of them per seconds and that the neural substrate for the deployment of attention and the execution of an eye movement might considerably overlap. Here we propose a computational model in which the deployment of attention with or without a subsequent eye movement emerges from local, distributed and numerical computations.