Stochastic resonance in attention switching

Keiichi Kitajo; Kentaro Yamanaka; Lawrence M. Ward; Yoshiharu Yamamoto

doi:10.1117/12.609501

23 May 2005 Stochastic resonance in attention switching

Keiichi Kitajo, Kentaro Yamanaka, Lawrence M. Ward, Yoshiharu Yamamoto

Proceedings Volume 5841, Fluctuations and Noise in Biological, Biophysical, and Biomedical Systems III; (2005) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.609501
Event: SPIE Third International Symposium on Fluctuations and Noise, 2005, Austin, Texas, United States

Abstract

We demonstrate experimentally that the human brain can make use of externally added noise to modulate attention switching between spatial locations. To do this we implemented a psychophysical task. Subjects were asked to respond to a weak gray-level target presented inside a marker box either in the left or right visual field while they fixated a central cross. Signal detection performance was improved by presenting a low level of randomly flickering gray-level noise between and outside the two possible target locations, and worsened by higher levels of noise. Our results suggest that noise can optimize switching behavior between multistable attentional states of the human brain via the mechanism of stochastic resonance.

Citation Download Citation

Keiichi Kitajo, Kentaro Yamanaka, Lawrence M. Ward, and Yoshiharu Yamamoto "Stochastic resonance in attention switching", Proc. SPIE 5841, Fluctuations and Noise in Biological, Biophysical, and Biomedical Systems III, (23 May 2005); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.609501

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