Does the prefrontal cortex (PFC) maintain the contents of working memory or does it direct the focus of attention? Lara and Wallis asked this question by training monkeys to perform a multi-color change detection task. Few PFC neurons encoded the color of the stimuli. Instead, the dominant signals were the spatial location of the item and the location of focal attention. This suggests that the PFC is more involved in directing attention than retaining information in working memory. Supporting this was increased power in alpha and theta power in the PFC, frequency bands associated with long-range neural communication.
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The title pretty much says it all. Attentional effects in honeybee brains. Neural responding to an object was enhanced relative to a competing object when the former object was chosen.
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Song et al examined oscillatory activity in humans performing an attention task. They found that phase-locking between theta and alpha bands. An uninformative cue initiated alpha pulse at a theta rhythm that seemed to reflect alternating sampling of the uninformative and informative cues.
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Tirin Moore and colleagues challenge the idea that neuron receptive fields shift in anticipation of eye movements, remapping from the pre-movement location to the post-movement location before the eye actually moves. They used multiple-electrode recording to provide a detailed maps of the receptive fields before and after movements. The receptive fields did not remap to reflect the post-movement location. Instead, all the receptive fields converged toward movement target. This suggest that the receptive field do not remap, they reflect attention to the movement target.
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Peelen and Kastner extend studies of attention in the lab (using simple, neutral displays) to the real world (complex, meaningful scenes). They discuss interactions between what and where templates shaped by object familiarity, scene context, and memory
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Noudoost, Clark, and Moore deactivated the frontal eye fields (FEF) and recorded from visual cortical area V4. This disrupted saccades to targets but *increased* pre-saccade activity in V4. V4 neurons, however, showed reduced discrimination of the target stimulus. It seems that the FEF provides details about the saccade target to visual cortex.
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The Oxford Handbook of Attention is a veritable who’s who of attention research. (Sorry that it costs $149 USD).
Check out the table of contents:Part A: Introduction
1. Current landscape and historical context, Michael Posner
Part B: Theoretical Models of Attention
2. Feature integration and guided search, Jeremy Wolfe
3. Perceptual/Executive load theory, Polly Dalton and Nilli Lavie
4. A multi-level account of selective attention, Sabine Kastner and John Serences
5. Large-scale network model of control, Marsel Mesulam and Professor Anna Christina Nobre
6. Multiple-demand network and adaptive coding, Mark Stokes and John Duncan
Part C: Spatial Attention
7. Spatial covert attention: Perceptual Modulation, Marisa Carrasco
8. Spatial orienting and attentional capture, Jan Theeuwes
9. Neural systems of spatial attention (fMRI), Diane Beck and Sabine Kastner
10. The time course of spatial attention: Insights from event-related brain potentials,Martin Eimer
11. Neuronal Mechanisms of Spatial Attention in Visual Cerebral Cortex, Marlene Cohen and John Maunsell
12. Cellular mechanisms of attentional control: Frontal, Jacqueline Gottlieb
13. Neuronal mechanisms of attentional control: Frontal cortex, Kelsey L. Clark, Behrad Noudoost, and Robert J. Schafer and Professor Tirin Moore
14. Neural mechanisms of Spatial Attention in the Visual Thalamus, Yuri B. Saalmann and Sabine Kastner
15. Attentional Functions of the Superior Colliculus, Richard J. Krauzlis
16. Orienting attention: a crossmodal perspective, Charles Spence
17. Neuronal Dynamics and the Mechanistic Bases of Selective Attention, Charles E.Schroeder, Jose L. Herrero and Saskia Haegens
18. The neuropharmacology of attention, Trevor Robbins
19. Developing attention and self-regulation in childhood, Michael Posner
Part D: Non-spatial Attention
20. Feature- and object-based attentional modulation in the human visual system,Miranda Scolari, Edward F. Ester, and John Serences
21. Object- and feature-based attention: monkey physiology, Stefan Treue
22. The Role of Brain Oscillations In The Temporal Limits of Attention, Kimron Shapiro and Simon Hanslmayr
23. Dynamic Attention, Patrick Cavanagh, Lorella Battelli, and Alex O. Holcombe
24. Temporal orienting, Anna Christina Nobre
Part E: Interactions between Attention and Other Psychological Domains
25. Attention, Motivation, and Emotion, Luiz Pessoa
26. Attention and executive functions
27. Neural mechanisms for the executive control of attention, Earl K. Miller and Timothy J. Buschman
28. Memory and Attention, Brice A. Kuhl and Marvin M. Chun
29. Attention and decision-making, Christopher Summerfield and Tobias Egner
30. Attention and action, Heiner Deubel
Part F: Attention-related Disorders
31. Attention and awareness, Geraint Rees
32. Attention and Aging, Theodore P. Zanto & Adam Gazzaley
33. Unilateral Spatial Neglect, Guiseppe Vallar
34. Neurological disorders of attention, Sanjay Manohar, Valerie Bonnelle and Masud Husain
35. Balint’s syndrome and the Study of Attention, Lynn C. Robertson
36. Rehabilitation of Attention Functions, Ian H. Robertson and Redmond G O’Connell
Part G: Computational Models
37. Theory of visual attention, Claus Bundesen and Thomas Habekost
38. Bottom up and contextual effects, Laurent Itti and Ali Borji
39. Bayesian models, Angela Yu
Part H: Conclusions
40. Outlook and Future Directions, Anna Christina Nobre and Sabine Kastner -
Wutz et al used a visual forward-masking paradigm (mask then target) to study the neural basis of visual perception. The mask sometimes interfered with perception of the target. Higher beta power before the mask was associated with incorrect perception of the target. Evoked alpha phase reset was associated with correct target perception. This shows how oscillatory dynamics may play a role in carving successive visual inputs into separate perceptions.
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VanRullen previews a recent paper by Kastner and colleagues and discusses evidence that covert attention involves rhythmic sampling of the environment.
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Sabine Kastner and crew show that when humans are cued to direct their attention to part of an object, uncued locations that are part of the same object are sampled periodically at about 8 Hz. Different, uncued, objects are also sampled at 4 Hz. This adds to a growing body of evidence that attention, and cognition in general, is rhythmic not continuous.
For reviews on this topic see:
- Buschman,T.J. and Miller, E.K. (2010) Shifting the Spotlight of Attention: Evidence for Discrete Computations in Cognition. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. 4(194): 1-9. View PDF »
- Miller, E.K. and Buschman, T.J. “Brain Rhythms for Cognition and Consciousness”. Neurosciences and the Human Person: New Perspectives on Human Activities A. Battro, S. Dehaene and W. Singer (eds), Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Scripta Varia 121, Vatican City, 2013. View PDF