Dataset Information

Shaping prestimulus neural activity with auditory rhythmic stimulation improves the temporal allocation of attention.

ABSTRACT: Human attention fluctuates across time, and even when stimuli have identical physical characteristics and the task demands are the same, relevant information is sometimes consciously perceived and at other times not. A typical example of this phenomenon is the attentional blink, where participants show a robust deficit in reporting the second of two targets (T2) in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) stream. Previous electroencephalographical (EEG) studies showed that neural correlates of correct T2 report are not limited to the RSVP period, but extend before visual stimulation begins. In particular, reduced oscillatory neural activity in the alpha band (8-12 Hz) before the onset of the RSVP has been linked to lower T2 accuracy. We therefore examined whether auditory rhythmic stimuli presented at a rate of 10?Hz (within the alpha band) could increase oscillatory alpha-band activity and improve T2 performance in the attentional blink time window. Behaviourally, the auditory rhythmic stimulation worked to enhance T2 accuracy. This enhanced perception was associated with increases in the posterior T2-evoked N2 component of the event-related potentials and this effect was observed selectively at lag 3. Frontal and posterior oscillatory alpha-band activity was also enhanced during auditory stimulation in the pre-RSVP period and positively correlated with T2 accuracy. These findings suggest that ongoing fluctuations can be shaped by sensorial events to improve the allocation of attention in time.

SUBMITTER: Ronconi L

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4822201 | biostudies-literature | 2016 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Shaping prestimulus neural activity with auditory rhythmic stimulation improves the temporal allocation of attention.

Ronconi Luca L Pincham Hannah L HL Cristoforetti Giulia G Facoetti Andrea A Szűcs Dénes D

Neuroreport 20160501 7

Human attention fluctuates across time, and even when stimuli have identical physical characteristics and the task demands are the same, relevant information is sometimes consciously perceived and at other times not. A typical example of this phenomenon is the attentional blink, where participants show a robust deficit in reporting the second of two targets (T2) in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) stream. Previous electroencephalographical (EEG) studies showed that neural correlates of ...[more]

PMID: 26986506

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Project description:Language comprehension relies on integrating words into progressively more complex structures, like phrases and sentences. This hierarchical structure-building is reflected in rhythmic neural activity across multiple timescales in E/MEG in healthy, awake participants. However, recent studies have shown evidence for this "cortical tracking" of higher-level linguistic structures also in a proportion of unresponsive patients. What does this tell us about these patients' residual levels of cognition and consciousness? Must the listener direct their attention toward higher level speech structures to exhibit cortical tracking, and would selective attention across levels of the hierarchy influence the expression of these rhythms? We investigated these questions in an EEG study of 72 healthy human volunteers listening to streams of monosyllabic isochronous English words that were either unrelated (scrambled condition) or composed of four-word-sequences building meaningful sentences (sentential condition). Importantly, there were no physical cues between four-word-sentences. Rather, boundaries were marked by syntactic structure and thematic role assignment. Participants were divided into three attention groups: from passive listening (passive group) to attending to individual words (word group) or sentences (sentence group). The passive and word groups were initially naïve to the sentential stimulus structure, while the sentence group was not. We found significant tracking at word- and sentence rate across all three groups, with sentence tracking linked to left middle temporal gyrus and right superior temporal gyrus. Goal-directed attention to words did not enhance word-rate-tracking, suggesting that word tracking here reflects largely automatic mechanisms, as was shown for tracking at the syllable-rate before. Importantly, goal-directed attention to sentences relative to words significantly increased sentence-rate-tracking over left inferior frontal gyrus. This attentional modulation of rhythmic EEG activity at the sentential rate highlights the role of attention in integrating individual words into complex linguistic structures. Nevertheless, given the presence of high-level cortical tracking under conditions of lower attentional effort, our findings underline the suitability of the paradigm in its clinical application in patients after brain injury. The neural dissociation between passive tracking of sentences and directed attention to sentences provides a potential means to further characterise the cognitive state of each unresponsive patient.

Dataset Information

Shaping prestimulus neural activity with auditory rhythmic stimulation improves the temporal allocation of attention.

Publications

Shaping prestimulus neural activity with auditory rhythmic stimulation improves the temporal allocation of attention.

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