Functional Roles of the Top-Down Information Processing in Cognitive Processes

1994 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary

• Project/Area Number: 05301011
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Co-operative Research (A)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Research Field: 実験系心理学
• Research Institution: University of Tokyo
• Principal Investigator: NIKI Hiroaki University of Tokyo, Department of Psychology, Professor, 文学部, 教授 (10073074)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): HASEGAWA Toshikazu University of Tokyo, Department of Humanities, Associate Professor, 教養学部, 助教授 (30172894) ; MIZUNO Setsuko Toyo-Gakuen University, Department of Humanities, Professor, 人文学部, 教授 (50141247) ; TAKANO Yotaro University of Tokyo, Department of Psychology, Associate Professor, 文学部, 助教授 (20197122) ; TACHIBANA Masao University of Tokyo, Department of Psychology, Professor, 文学部, 教授 (60132734) ; NAKATANI Kazuo Senshu University, Department of Psychology, Professor, 文学部, 教授 (00026816)
• Project Period (FY): 1993 – 1994
• Keywords: top-down processing / feedback / retina / frontal cortex / slice patch / attention / learning / mathematical models

Research Abstract

In order to elucidate the functional roles of the top-down processing, we conducted a series of physiological and psychological experiments along with mathematical analyzes. Responses of retinal cells to light stimulus were recorded in carp slice preparation using the whole-cell patch-clamp technique. Such preparations are found to be useful for studying feedback mechanisms in retina. Neuronal correlates of selective attention were obtained from the experiments in which single unit activity and field potential were recorded in the monkey prefrontal cortex. From the cognitive studies, temporal characteristics of the selective attention induced by an abrupt change in the visual field were featured in terms of the decision of the direction of apparent motion. In the psychophysical experiment of motion aftereffect, it was found that a concurrent task which required selective attention did not reduce the duration of the motion aftereffect of complex motion, such as expansion, contraction and rotation, though it did reduce that of simple translation. Other problems investigated in the psychological experiments of our proiect were as follows : yellow-blue mechanism in human color vision, color perception for daily objects, pitch perception of absolute pitch possessors and bias in probability judgment by humans. In the theoretical approach to the foundations of the mechanisms of human information processing, mathematical models were formulated and analyzed ; a new learning method was proposed in the analysis of neural network models, a computation model was formulated for human slit vision and a computation theory was proposed on the basis of the analysis of the relationship between feature detection and computational complexity.