Noise correlations and neuronal diversity may limit the utility of winner-take-all readout in a pop out visual search task

Visual search involves active scanning of the environment to locate objects of interest against a background of irrelevant distractors. One widely accepted theory posits that pop out visual search is computed by a winner-take-all (WTA) competition between contextually modulated cells that form a saliency map. However, previous studies have shown that the ability of WTA mechanisms to accumulate information from large populations of neurons is limited, thus raising the question of whether WTA can underlie pop out visual search. To address this question, we conducted a modeling study to investigate how accurately the WTA mechanism can detect the deviant stimulus in a pop out task. We analyzed two types of WTA readout mechanisms: single-best-cell WTA, where the decision is made based on a single winning cell, and a generalized population-based WTA, where the decision is based on the winning population of similarly tuned cells. Our results show that neither WTA mechanism can account for the high accuracy found in behavioral experiments. The inherent neuronal heterogeneity prevents the single-best-cell WTA from accumulating information even from large populations, whereas the accuracy of the generalized population-based WTA algorithm is negatively affected by the widely reported noise correlations. These findings underscore the need to revisit the key assumptions explored in our theoretical analysis, particularly concerning the decoding mechanism and the statistical properties of neuronal population responses to pop out stimuli. The analysis identifies specific response statistics that require further empirical characterization to accurately predict WTA performance in biologically plausible models of visual pop out detection.Author summary: Visual search is an important cognitive process that allows organisms to locate objects of interest within complex environments. Whether scanning a crowded scene or locating a specific item, the brain’s ability to prioritize certain stimuli is essential for effective perception and decision-making. One widely accepted theory suggests that this process is governed by a winner-take-all algorithm, where the most salient stimulus suppresses competing signals to capture attention. This hypothesis has been supported by empirical studies and provides an elegant explanation for how the brain achieves saliency-based selection.