Ah, sadly, google scholar did not return a link by Jose Principe on the topic of top-down attention! Do you have a link that I could follow? Also, as far as I understand it, top-down attention is the goal-driven attention mechanism, which is somewhat different than what I proposed. I am curious what parallel you saw — are you saying that the suppression of conflicting interpretations is similar to top-down attention? (the old lady/young lady illusion = top-down?) I look forward to hearing more! :)