Neural mechanisms of saliency, attention, and orienting

Abstract

Active vision involves a continual re-orienting of the line of sight with stimuli pertinent to current goals. In humans and other primates, such orienting behavior relies on a distributed network of cortical and subcortical brain areas. The neural basis of orienting is theorized to be under the control of two general mechanisms: One mechanism transforms complex visual input into a spatial map that highlights the most visually conspicuous locations (saliency map). A second mechanism integrates bottom-up saliency with internal goals for flexible orienting towards behaviorally relevant stimuli (priority map). We review evidence for such mechanisms in the primate brain and raise novel issues and insights that challenge current views about the neural basis of saliency, attention, and orienting.