Control of Selective Visual Attention: Modeling the "Where" Pathway
Authors: Ernst Niebur, Christof Koch
Published in: Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 8  (NIPS 1995) (Main Conference Track), 1995

Abstract: Intermediate and higher vision processes  require selection of a sub(cid:173) set  of the  available sensory  information  before  further  processing.  Usually,  this  selection  is  implemented  in  the  form  of a  spatially  circumscribed  region of the  visual field,  the  so-called  "focus  of at(cid:173) tention"  which  scans  the  visual scene  dependent  on the  input  and  on the attentional state of the subject.  We here  present a  model for  the control of the focus of attention in primates, based on a saliency  map.  This mechanism is not only expected  to model the functional(cid:173) ity of biological vision but also to be essential for the understanding  of complex scenes  in machine vision. 
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Introduction:  "What"  and  "Where"  In Vision 
It is  a  generally  accepted  fact  that  the  computations  of early  vision  are  massively  parallel operations,  i.e.,  applied in parallel to  all parts of the visual field.  This high  degree  of parallelism cannot be sustained in in~ermediate and higher  vision because  of the astronomical number of different possible combination of features.  Therefore,  it  becomes  necessary  to  select  only  a  part  of the  instantaneous  sensory  input  for  more  detailed  processing  and  to  discard  the  rest.  This is  the  mechanism of visual  selective  attention. 
•  Present  address:  Zanvyl  Krieger  Mind/Brain  Institute  and Department  of Neuros(cid:173)
cience,  3400  N.  Charles  Street, The Johns  Hopkins  University,  Baltimore,  MD  21218 _ 
Control of Selective Visual  Attention:  Modeling the "Where" Pathway 
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It is  clear  that similar selection  mechanisms are  also  required  in  machine vision for  the  analysis of all but the simplest visual scenes.  Attentional mechanisms are slowly  introduced  in  this  field;  e.g. , Yamada and  Cottrell  (1995)  used  sequential scanning  by  a  "focus  of attention"  in  the  context  of face  recognition.  Another  model  for  eye  scan  path  generation,  which  is  characterized  by  a  strong  top-down  influence,  is  presented  by  Rao and Ballard (this  volume).  Sequential scanning can be applied to  more abstract spaces, like the dynamics of complex systems in optimization problems  with  large numbers  of minima (Tsioutsias and  Mjolsness,  this  volume). 
Primate vision is  organized  along  two  major anatomical pathways.  One  of them  is  concerned  mainly  with  object  recognition.  For  this  reason ,  it  has  been  called  the  What- pathway;  for  anatomical  reasons ,  it  is  also  known  as  the  ventral  pathway.  The  principal  task  of the  other  major pathway  is  the  determination of the  location  of objects  and  therefore  it  is  called  the  Where  pathway  or,  again  for  anatomical  reasons,  the  dorsal  pathway. 
In  previous work  (Niebur &  Koch ,  1994), we  presented  a  model for  the  implement(cid:173) ation  of the  What  pathway.  The  underlying  mechanism  is  "temporal  tagging:"  it  is  assumed  that  the  attended  region  of  the  visual  field  is  distinguished  from  the  unattended  parts  by  the  temporal  fine-structure  of the  neuronal  spike  trains.  We  have  shown  that  temporal tagging can  be  achieved  by  introducing  moderate  levels  of correlation 1  between  those  neurons  which  respond  to  attended stimuli. 
How  can  such  synchronicity  be  obtained?  We  have  suggested  a  simple,  neurally  plausible mechanism , namely common input to  all  cells  which  respond  to  attended  stimuli.  Such  (excitatory)  input will  increase  the  propensity  of postsynaptic cells  to  fire  for  a  short  time  after  receiving  this  input,  and thereby  increase  the  correlation  between  spike  trains  without  necessarily  increasing  the  average  firing  rate . 
The subject  of the  present  study  is  to  provide  a  model of the  control system which  generates  such  modulating  input.  We  will  show  that  it  is  possible  to  construct  an  integrated  system  of  attentional  control  which  is  based  on  neurally  plausible  elements  and  which  is  compatible with  the  anatomy and  physiology of the  primate  visual system .  The system scans  a  visual Scene  and identifies its most salient parts.  A  possible task would  be  "Find all  faces  in this image."  We  are confident  that this  model  will  not  only  further  our  understanding  of the  function  of biological  vision  but  that it will  also  be  relevant for  technical  applications. 
2  A  Simple Model of The Dorsal  Pathway 
2.1  Overall Structure 
Figure  1 shows  an  overview  of the  model  Where  pathway.  Input  is  provided  in  the  form  of digitized  images from  an  NTSC  camera which  is  then  analyzed  in  various  feature  maps.  These maps are organized around the known operations in early visual  cortices.  They  are  implemented at different  spatial scales  and in  a  center-surround  structure  akin to  visual receptive  fields .  Different  spatial scales  are  implemented as  Gaussian pyramids (Adelson, Anderson , Bergen,  Burt,  &  Ogden,  1984).  The center 
1 In  (Niebur,  Koch,  &  Rosin,  1993),  a  similar  model  was  developed  using  periodic  "40Hz"  modulation.  The  present  model  can  be  adapted  mutatis  mutandis  to  this  type  of modulation. 
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of the  receptive  field  corresponds  to  the  value  of a  pixel  at  level  n  in  the  pyramid  and  the  surround to  the  corresponding  pixels  at level  n + 2,  level  0 being  the  image  in normal size.  The features  implemented so far are  the  thr~e principal components  of  primate  color  vision  (intensity,  red-green,  blue-yellow),  four  orientations,  and  temporal change.  Short  descriptions  of the  different  feature  maps are presented  in  the  next  section  (2.2). 
We  then  (section  2.3)  address  the  question  of the  integration  of  the  input  in  the  "saliency map,"  a  topographically organized map which codes for  the instantaneous  conspicuity  of the  different  parts of the visual field .