The Temporal Dynamic Relationship Between Attention and Crowding: Electrophysiological Evidence From an Event-Related Potential Study.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Peng C
PROVIDER: S-EPMC6261982 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:How attentional modulation on brain activities determines behavioral performance has been one of the most important issues in cognitive neuroscience. This issue has been addressed by comparing the temporal relationship between attentional modulations on neural activities and behavior. Our previous study measured the time course of attention with amplitude and phase coherence of steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP) and found that the modulation latency of phase coherence rather than that of amplitude was consistent with the latency of behavioral performance. In this study, as a complementary report, we compared the time course of visual attention shift measured by event-related potentials (ERPs) with that by target detection task. We developed a novel technique to compare ERPs with behavioral results and analyzed the EEG data in our previous study. Two sets of flickering stimulus at different frequencies were presented in the left and right visual hemifields, and a target or distracter pattern was presented randomly at various moments after an attention-cue presentation. The observers were asked to detect targets on the attended stimulus after the cue. We found that two ERP components, P300 and N2pc, were elicited by the target presented at the attended location. Time-course analyses revealed that attentional modulation of the P300 and N2pc amplitudes increased gradually until reaching a maximum and lasted at least 1.5 s after the cue onset, which is similar to the temporal dynamics of behavioral performance. However, attentional modulation of these ERP components started later than that of behavioral performance. Rather, the time course of attentional modulation of behavioral performance was more closely associated with that of the concurrently recorded SSVEPs analyzed. These results suggest that neural activities reflected not by either the P300 or N2pc, but by the SSVEPs, are the source of attentional modulation of behavioral performance.
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Project description:A promising line of research on forensic assessment of paraphilic sexual interest focuses on behavioral measures of visual attention using sexual stimuli as distractors. The present study combined event-related potentials (ERPs) with behavioral measures to investigate whether detection of a hidden sexual preference can be improved with ERPs. Normal variants of sexual orientation were used for a proof-of-concept investigation. Accordingly, 40 heterosexual and 40 gay men participated in the study. Within each group, half of the participants were instructed to hide their sexual orientation. The results showed that a match between sexual orientation and stimulus delays responses and influences ERP before motor responses. Late ERP components showed higher potential in differentiating hidden sexual preferences than motor responses, thereby showing how ERPs can be used in combination with reaction time measures to potentially facilitate the detection of hidden sexual preferences.
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Project description:How we compute time is not fully understood. Questions include whether an automatic brain mechanism is engaged in temporally regular environmental structure in order to anticipate events, and whether this can be dissociated from task-related processes, including response preparation, selection and execution. To investigate these issues, a passive temporal oddball task requiring neither time-based motor response nor explicit decision was specifically designed and delivered to participants during high-density, event-related potentials recording. Participants were presented with pairs of audiovisual stimuli (S1 and S2) interspersed with an Inter-Stimulus Interval (ISI) that was manipulated according to an oddball probabilistic distribution. In the standard condition (70% of trials), the ISI lasted 1,500 ms, while in the two alternative, deviant conditions (15% each), it lasted 2,500 and 3,000 ms. The passive over-exposition to the standard ISI drove participants to automatically and progressively create an implicit temporal expectation of S2 onset, reflected by the time course of the Contingent Negative Variation response, which always peaked in correspondence to the point of S2 maximum expectation and afterwards inverted in polarity towards the baseline. Brain source analysis of S1- and ISI-related ERP activity revealed activation of sensorial cortical areas and the supplementary motor area (SMA), respectively. In particular, since the SMA time course synchronised with standard ISI, we suggest that this area is the major cortical generator of the temporal CNV reflecting an automatic, action-independent mechanism underlying temporal expectancy.
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Project description:The N2pc ERP component has been widely used as a measure of lateralized visual attention. It is characterized by a negativity contralateral to the attended location or target, and it is thought to reflect contralaterally enhanced processing of attended information in intermediate to high levels of the ventral visual pathway. Given that the receptive fields in these areas often extend a few degrees into the ipsilateral hemifield, we might expect that near-midline stimuli would be processed by both the contralateral and ipsilateral hemispheres, resulting in a diminished N2pc. However, little is known about the effect of eccentricity on the N2pc component. To address this gap in knowledge, we recorded the EEG while participants performed a discrimination task with stimuli presented at one of five eccentricities (0°, 0.05°, 1°, 2°, 4° and 8° between the inner edge of the stimulus and the midline). We found that the N2pc amplitude remained relatively constant across eccentricities, including when the inner edge was at the midline, except that N2pc amplitude was reduced by more than 50% at the greatest eccentricity (8°). We also examined the contralateral positivity that often follows the N2pc. This positivity became progressively larger, and the transition from negative to positive occurred progressively later, as the eccentricity increased. These findings suggest that future experiments looking at the N2pc can use near-midline stimuli without compromising the N2pc amplitude, but should avoid large eccentricities. Implications about the neural generators of the N2pc are also discussed.
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Project description:Background The significance of implicit self-schema and other-schema in major depressive disorder (MDD) is highlighted by both cognitive theory and attachment theory. The purpose of the current study was to investigate the behavioral and event-related potential (ERP) characteristics of implicit schemas in MDD patients. Methods The current study recruited 40 patients with MDD and 33 healthy controls (HCs). The participants were screened for mental disorders using the Mini-International Neuropsychiatric Interview. Hamilton Depression Rating Scale-17 and Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale-14 were employed to assess the clinical symptoms. Extrinsic Affective Simon Task (EAST) was conducted to measure the characteristics of implicit schemas. Meanwhile, reaction time and electroencephalogram data were recorded. Results Behavioral indexes showed that HCs responded faster to positive self and positive others than negative self (t = −3.304, p = 0.002, Cohen’s d = 0.575) and negative others (t = −3.155, p = 0.003, Cohen’s d = 0.549), respectively. However, MDD did not show this pattern (p > 0.05). The difference in other-EAST effect between HCs and MDD was significant (t = 2.937, p = 0.004, Cohen’s d = 0.691). The ERP indicators of self-schema showed that under the condition of positive self, the mean amplitude of LPP in MDD was significantly smaller than that in HCs (t = −2.180, p = 0.034, Cohen’s d = 0.902). The ERP indexes of other-schema showed that HCs had a larger absolute value of N200 peak amplitude for negative others (t = 2.950, p = 0.005, Cohen’s d = 0.584) and a larger P300 peak amplitude for positive others (t = 2.185, p = 0.033, Cohen’s d = 0.433). The above patterns were not shown in MDD (p > 0.05). The comparison between groups found that under the condition of negative others, the absolute value of N200 peak amplitude in HCs was larger than that in MDD (t = 2.833, p = 0.006, Cohen’s d = 1.404); under the condition of positive others, the P300 peak amplitude (t = −2.906, p = 0.005, Cohen’s d = 1.602) and LPP amplitude (t = −2.367, p = 0.022, Cohen’s d = 1.100) in MDD were smaller than that in HCs. Conclusion Patients with MDD lack positive self-schema and positive other-schema. Implicit other-schema might be related to abnormalities in both the early automatic processing stage and the late elaborate processing stage, while the implicit self-schema might be related only to the abnormality in the late elaborate processing stage.
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