{"doi":"10.1167/jov.23.5.16","title":"A brain-inspired object-based attention network for multiobject recognition and visual reasoning","abstract":"The visual system uses sequences of selective glimpses to objects to support goal-directed behavior, but how is this attention control learned? Here we present an encoder-decoder model inspired by the interacting bottom-up and top-down visual pathways making up the recognition-attention system in the brain. At every iteration, a new glimpse is taken from the image and is processed through the \"what\" encoder, a hierarchy of feedforward, recurrent, and capsule layers, to obtain an object-centric (object-file) representation. This representation feeds to the \"where\" decoder, where the evolving recurrent representation provides top-down attentional modulation to plan subsequent glimpses and impact routing in the encoder. We demonstrate how the attention mechanism significantly improves the accuracy of classifying highly overlapping digits. In a visual reasoning task requiring comparison of two objects, our model achieves near-perfect accuracy and significantly outperforms larger models in generalizing to unseen stimuli. Our work demonstrates the benefits of object-based attention mechanisms taking sequential glimpses of objects.","journal":"Journal of Vision","year":2023,"id":357842,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":12,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9556,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2023-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1107619,"name":"Seoyoung Ahn","orcid":"0000-0002-7842-9208","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1107620,"name":"Gregory J. Zelinsky","orcid":"0000-0002-3265-3159","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1107618,"name":"Hossein Adeli","orcid":"0000-0002-1132-1091","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":133,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T01:13:39.186262Z","pmid":"37212782","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}