Dataset Information

Attention Reorients Periodically.

ABSTRACT: Reorienting of voluntary attention enables the processing of stimuli at previously unattended locations. Although studies have identified a ventral fronto-parietal network underlying attention [1, 2], little is known about whether and how early visual areas are involved in involuntary [3, 4] and even less in voluntary [5] reorienting, and their temporal dynamics are unknown. We used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) over the occipital cortex to interfere with attentional reorienting and study its role and temporal dynamics in this process. Human observers performed an orientation discrimination task, with either valid or invalid attention cueing, across a range of stimulus contrasts. Valid cueing induced a behavioral response gain increase, higher asymptotic performance for attended than unattended locations. During subsequent TMS sessions, observers performed the same task, with high stimulus contrast. Based on phosphene mapping, TMS double pulses were applied at one of various delays to a consistent brain location in retinotopic areas (V1/V2), corresponding to the evoked signal of the target or distractor, in a valid or invalid trial. Thus, the stimulation was identical for the four experimental conditions (valid/invalid cue condition × target/distractor-stimulated). TMS modulation of the target and distractor were both periodic (5 Hz, theta) and out of phase with respect to each other in invalid trials only, when attention had to be disengaged from the distractor and reoriented to the target location. Reorientation of voluntary attention periodically involves V1/V2 at the theta frequency. These results suggest that TMS probes theta phase-reset by attentional reorienting and help link periodic sampling in time and attention reorienting in space.

SUBMITTER: Dugue L

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4935543 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Attention Reorients Periodically.

Dugué Laura L Roberts Mariel M Carrasco Marisa M

Current biology : CB 20160602 12

Reorienting of voluntary attention enables the processing of stimuli at previously unattended locations. Although studies have identified a ventral fronto-parietal network underlying attention [1, 2], little is known about whether and how early visual areas are involved in involuntary [3, 4] and even less in voluntary [5] reorienting, and their temporal dynamics are unknown. We used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) over the occipital cortex to interfere with attentional reorienting and st ...[more]

PMID: 27265395

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Project description:Recent psychophysical studies have demonstrated that periodic attention in the 4-8 Hz range facilitates performance on visual detection. The present study examined the periodicity of feature binding, another major function of attention, in human observers (3 females and 5 males for behavior, with 7 males added for the EEG experiment). In a psychophysical task, observers reported a synchronous pair of brightness (light/dark) and orientation (clockwise/counterclockwise) patterns from two combined brightness-orientation pairs presented in rapid succession. We found that temporal binding performance exhibits periodic oscillations at ?8 Hz as a function of stimulus onset delay from a self-initiated button press in conditions where brightness-orientation pairs were spatially separated. However, as one would expect from previous studies on pre-attentive binding, significant oscillations were not apparent in conditions where brightness-orientation pairs were spatially superimposed. EEG results, while fully compatible with behavioral oscillations, also revealed a significant dependence of binding performance across trials on prestimulus neural oscillatory phases within the corresponding band. The peak frequency of this dependence was found to be correlated with intertrial phase coherence (ITPC) around the timing of button press in parietal sensors. Moreover, the peak frequency of the ITPC was found to predict behavioral frequency in individual observers. Together, these results suggest that attention operates periodically (at ?8 Hz) on the perceptual binding of multimodal visual information and is mediated by neural oscillations phase-locked to voluntary action.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Recent studies in neuroscience suggest that the brain's attention network operates rhythmically at 4-8 Hz. The present behavioral task revealed that attentional binding of visual features is performed periodically at ?8 Hz, and EEG analysis showed a dependence of binding performance on prestimulus neural oscillatory phase. Furthermore, this association between perceptual and neural oscillations is triggered by voluntary action. Periodic processes driven by attention appear to contribute not only to sensory processing but also to the temporal binding of diverse information into a conscious event synchronized with action.

Dataset Information

Attention Reorients Periodically.

Publications

Attention Reorients Periodically.

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