Schedule of Events | Symposia

Emergence of Attentional Templates in Concept Learning and the Underlying Neural Mechanisms

Poster Session C - Sunday, March 30, 2025, 5:00 – 7:00 pm EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Melisa Gumus¹ (melisa.gumus@mail.utoronto.ca), Wen Jia Zhao¹, Zoey Zhi Yi Lee¹, Michael L. Mack¹; ¹University of Toronto

Attention optimizes learning, filtering relevant information to build conceptual knowledge. Despite prominent theories implicating attention during learning, it remains unclear how concepts stored in memory guide attention. We capture this phenomenon in attentional templates that emerge from learning, store goal-relevant representations, and aid attention allocation. Healthy young adults categorized complex visual items in two separate learning tasks. They then completed a test wherein each trial began with a cue, indicating which learning task should be employed. Random test trials included a probe instead of the visual stimulus; a small arrow appeared at a feature location that was relevant (i.e., valid) or irrelevant (i.e., invalid) for the cued task. Successful learners were faster at responding to valid probes than invalid, deploying concept-specific attentional templates that emerged from learning. Learning success determined the efficiency of attention allocation as the response time benefit was greater with higher learning accuracy. Neural mechanisms underlying attentional templates were then revealed with fMRI. Hippocampal representations exhibited task-specific shifts from pre- to post-learning consistent with the emergence of attentional templates. Higher learning performance led to greater representational shift, suggestive of efficient attentional allocation. Moreover, top-down signals controlled the deployment of attentional templates: parietal activation was associated with successful switching between learned concepts and the corresponding attentional templates. In conclusion, concept learning builds behaviourally relevant attentional templates that are modulated by top-down parietal signals and hippocampal representations. Concepts stored in memory guide attention, paving the way for understanding the complex relationship between learning, memory and attention.

Topic Area: LONG-TERM MEMORY: Episodic