Treisman's 'spotlight' model of visual attention starts out with a stimulus, which is then analysed simultaneously by various feature detectors, whose output is integrated (rather mysteriously) and used to 'look up' the memory file of known objects.
Figure1: Treisman's 'Spotlight' model of visual attention (1986), adapted from Kolb & Wishaw (1996) by author
Various mappings of brain areas to Treisman's functional blocks have been attempted: this is one speculative mapping.
Figure 2: speculative mapping of neural pathways possibly corresponding to Treisman's model (based on Theeuwes, 1993 and Milner & Goodale, 1995)
In this image, there is a large red-colored X in amongst various other smaller red and green X's and O's. The larger red X 'leaps' out of the image, presumably as a result of bottom-up processes.
Figure 3: Bottom-up processing (author)
The sketch of the macaque brain is marked with the various brain areas referred to in the key. Key:
V1 - Visual area 1
V2 - Visual area 2
V4 - Visual area 4
AIT - Anterior inferotemporal area
CIT - Central inferotemporal area
PIT -Posterior inferotemporal area
VIP - Ventral intraparietal area
LIP - Lateral intraparietal area
MT - middle temporal area
MST - medial superior temporal area
7a - Brodmann's area 7a
Figure 4: visual areas indicated for the macaque monkey. Redrawn from Maunsell & Ferrera (1995)