Visual attention forms the basis of understanding the visual world. In this work we follow a computational approach to investigate the biological basis of visual attention. We analyze retinal and cortical electrophysiological data from mouse. Visual Stimuli are Natural Images depicting real world scenes. Our results show that in primary visual cortex (V1), a subset of around $10\%$ of the neurons responds differently to salient versus non-salient visual regions. Visual attention information was not traced in retinal response. It appears that the retina remains naive concerning visual attention; cortical response gets modulated to interpret visual attention information. Experimental animal studies may be designed to further explore the biological basis of visual attention we traced in this study. In applied and translational science, our study contributes to the design of improved visual prostheses systems -- systems that create artificial visual percepts to visually impaired individuals by electronic implants placed on either the retina or the cortex.

翻译：视觉注意力构成了理解视觉世界的基础。在本工作中，我们采用计算方法研究视觉注意力的生物学基础。我们分析小鼠的视网膜和皮层电生理数据。视觉刺激是描绘真实世界场景的自然图像。我们的结果表明，在初级视觉皮层（V1）中，约有$10\%$的神经元子集对显著与非显著视觉区域的响应存在差异。视觉注意力信息未在视网膜响应中追溯。视网膜似乎对视觉注意力保持原始状态；皮层响应被调节以解读视觉注意力信息。可设计实验性动物研究以进一步探索本研究中追溯的视觉注意力生物学基础。在应用与转化科学领域，本研究有助于设计改进的视觉假体系统——通过放置在视网膜或皮层上的电子植入物为视障个体产生人工视觉感知的系统。