defining a link between perceptual learning and attention定义一个关系知觉学习和关注.pdfVIP

Primer Defining a Link between Perceptual Learning and Attention Yuko Yotsumoto, Takeo Watanabe* xperts show amazingly high perceptual skills. Experienced jewelers routinely classify diamonds that Eappear very similar to the uninitiated into different grades with high precision. Within a few seconds, airport baggage security officers can detect forbidden inconspicuous materials through x-ray images. Such feats are possible because the experts’ “eyes” are trained through practice and experience. Long after most aspects of brain development have ceased, repeated exposures or trainings improve our perceptual/sensory abilities, and cause neural reorganizations in the brain. Such experience-induced improvement, called perceptual learning [1], and the accompanying neural changes, called neural plasticity [2–6], underlie not only our ability to master a trade but operate at a more fundamental level to help us make sense of the world. We are constantly exposed to an overwhelming amount of sensory signals, most of which are not noteworthy. To function normally in the world, we must react quickly doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0060221.g001 and precisely to the important signals, while ignoring or Figure 1. Visual Information Processing discounting the less important, just as organisms must do in Visual processing is conducted at many different levels in a hierarchical the natural environment to survive. By directing attention manner. Light strikes the retina and is converted into electrical signals. only to important signals or being repeatedly exposed to They are then sent to the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) in the signals in an important context, our sensory systems learn