PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Kai J Fox
AU  - Daniel Birman
AU  - Justin L Gardner
TI  - Gain, not concomitant changes in spatial receptive field properties, improves task performance in a neural network attention model
AID  - 10.1101/2022.03.04.483026
DP  - 2023 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2022.03.04.483026
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2023/03/26/2022.03.04.483026.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2023/03/26/2022.03.04.483026.full
AB  - Attention allows us to focus sensory processing on behaviorally relevant aspects of the visual world. One potential mechanism of attention is a change in the gain of sensory responses. However, changing gain at early stages could have multiple downstream consequences for visual processing. Which, if any, of these effects can account for the benefits of attention for detection and discrimination? Using a model of primate visual cortex we document how a Gaussian-shaped gain modulation results in changes to spatial tuning properties. Forcing the model to use only these changes failed to produce any benefit in task performance. Instead, we found that gain alone was both necessary and sufficient to explain category detection and discrimination during attention. Our results show how gain can give rise to changes in receptive fields which are not necessary for enhancing task performance.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.