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Binding, spatial attention and perceptual awareness

Nature Reviews Neuroscience volume 4, pages 93–102 (2003)Cite this article

Key Points

  • The binding problem is a real problem in human vision. It can be observed under special laboratory conditions in normal healthy populations and under less special conditions in patients with lesions that affect areas of the parietal lobes or areas of the thalamus that are strongly connected to the parietal cortex.

  • Proper binding of certain features of an object in vision (for example, motion, shape, colour and orientation) requires spatial and attentional contributions that are associated with parietal function. This conclusion has received converging support from imaging, electrophysiological and neuropsychological studies in humans. The possible roles of spatial attention and temporal synchrony in binding are discussed.

  • Features that are believed to be encoded in separate cortical feature maps do not require spatial attention for detection, and their detection does not activate parietal areas. Perceptual awareness of a feature does not necessarily require information about its location, but awareness of the co-localization of two different features (such as shape and colour) does. Again, evidence for this idea comes from imaging, electrophysiological and neuropsychological studies.

  • Synaesthesia is a relatively rare condition in which a feature that is not present in the stimulus is bound to a feature that is, and is perceived together with the features that are present. Imaging data have suggested that the synaesthetic phenomenon arises as an interaction between the parietal cortex and areas of the ventral cortex that encode different visual features, similar to evidence for feature binding in non-synaesthetes. This suggests that at least certain forms of synaesthesia require attentional input, and that binding of a feature that is absent involves similar architecture to binding of features that are present.

  • Behavioural evidence supports the conclusion that most (and perhaps all) synaesthetic experience requires attention to and awareness of the stimulus that induces the experience. The visual system does not appear to bind synaesthetic features preattentively in most synaesthetes, which is consistent with results in normal visual binding.

Abstract

The world is experienced as a unified whole, but sensory systems do not deliver it to the brain in this way. Signals from different sensory modalities are initially registered in separate brain areas — even within a modality, features of the sensory mosaic such as colour, size, shape and motion are fragmented and registered in specialized areas of the cortex. How does this information become bound together in experience? Findings from the study of abnormal binding — for example, after stroke — and unusual binding — as in synaesthesia — might help us to understand the cognitive and neural mechanisms that contribute to solving this 'binding problem'.

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Figure 1: Illusory conjunctions.
Figure 2: Examples of displays used in visual search studies.
Figure 3: Synaesthetic colours.
Figure 4: Examples of stimuli used to determine whether inducers were influenced by the size of the attentional window in synaesthetes.

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Acknowledgements

Preparation of this article was supported by a Merit award from the Office of Veterans Affairs and by an NIMH grant.

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    Lynn C. Robertson

  2. Department of Psychology and Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, 3210 Tolman Hall, University of California, Berkeley, 94720-1650, California, USA

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FURTHER INFORMATION

Encyclopedia of Life Sciences

topographic maps in the brain

MIT Encyclopedia of Cognitive Sciences

electrophysiology, electric and magnetic evoked fields

positron emission tomography

magnetic resonance imaging

modularity of mind

American Synesthesia Association

The International Synaesthesia Association

The Synesthesia mailing list

Glossary

ACHROMATOPSIA

The inability to perceive colours despite otherwise intact vision.

NEGLECT

A neurological syndrome (often involving damage to the right parietal cortex) in which patients show a marked difficulty in detecting or responding to information in the contralesional field.

FEATURE MAP

A distinct population of specialized detectors that respond to basic perceptual features (for example, colour) yielding immunity to distractors and feature migrations from one object to another.

EXTINCTION

Lack of awareness of stimulation on the side contralateral to brain injury when stimulation is also presented on the ipsilateral side.

VENTRAL PROCESSING STREAM

A stream of processing arising in the parvocellular system and traversing along the occipital–temporal cortex, often referred to as the 'what' system.

DORSAL PROCESSING STREAM

A stream of processing arising in the magnocellular system and traversing along occipital–parietal–frontal cortex, often referred to as the 'where' or 'how' system.

TRANSCRANIAL MAGNETIC STIMULATION

(TMS). A technique that is used to induce a transient interruption of normal activity in a relatively restricted area of the brain. It is based on the generation of a strong magnetic field near the area of interest, which, if changed rapidly enough, will induce an electric field that is sufficient to stimulate neurons.

γ-BAND ELECTROENCEPHALOGRAM

Electrophysiological activity measured in the 30–50 Hz range from scalp electrodes.

RE-ENTRANT PATHWAYS

Feedback from higher levels of hierarchical processing to lower levels, creating reiterative interactions between higher and lower levels of processing.

PREATTENTIVE

Processing that occurs before attention is engaged and is therefore capable of affecting performance without awareness.

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Robertson, L. Binding, spatial attention and perceptual awareness. Nat Rev Neurosci 4, 93–102 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn1030

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