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Pre-Stimulus Activity Predicts the Winner of Top-Down vs. Bottom-Up Attentional Selection

Our ability to process visual information is fundamentally limited. This leads to competition between sensory information that is relevant for top-down goals and sensory information that is perceptually salient, but task-irrelevant. The aim of the present study was to identify, from EEG recordings,...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Mazaheri, Ali, DiQuattro, Nicholas E., Bengson, Jesse, Geng, Joy J.
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2011
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3046127/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21386896
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0016243
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author Mazaheri, Ali
DiQuattro, Nicholas E.
Bengson, Jesse
Geng, Joy J.
author_facet Mazaheri, Ali
DiQuattro, Nicholas E.
Bengson, Jesse
Geng, Joy J.
author_sort Mazaheri, Ali
collection PubMed
description Our ability to process visual information is fundamentally limited. This leads to competition between sensory information that is relevant for top-down goals and sensory information that is perceptually salient, but task-irrelevant. The aim of the present study was to identify, from EEG recordings, pre-stimulus and pre-saccadic neural activity that could predict whether top-down or bottom-up processes would win the competition for attention on a trial-by-trial basis. We employed a visual search paradigm in which a lateralized low contrast target appeared alone, or with a low (i.e., non-salient) or high contrast (i.e., salient) distractor. Trials with a salient distractor were of primary interest due to the strong competition between top-down knowledge and bottom-up attentional capture. Our results demonstrated that 1) in the 1-sec pre-stimulus interval, frontal alpha (8–12 Hz) activity was higher on trials where the salient distractor captured attention and the first saccade (bottom-up win); and 2) there was a transient pre-saccadic increase in posterior-parietal alpha (7–8 Hz) activity on trials where the first saccade went to the target (top-down win). We propose that the high frontal alpha reflects a disengagement of attentional control whereas the transient posterior alpha time-locked to the saccade indicates sensory inhibition of the salient distractor and suppression of bottom-up oculomotor capture.
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spelling pubmed-30461272011-03-08 Pre-Stimulus Activity Predicts the Winner of Top-Down vs. Bottom-Up Attentional Selection Mazaheri, Ali DiQuattro, Nicholas E. Bengson, Jesse Geng, Joy J. PLoS One Research Article Our ability to process visual information is fundamentally limited. This leads to competition between sensory information that is relevant for top-down goals and sensory information that is perceptually salient, but task-irrelevant. The aim of the present study was to identify, from EEG recordings, pre-stimulus and pre-saccadic neural activity that could predict whether top-down or bottom-up processes would win the competition for attention on a trial-by-trial basis. We employed a visual search paradigm in which a lateralized low contrast target appeared alone, or with a low (i.e., non-salient) or high contrast (i.e., salient) distractor. Trials with a salient distractor were of primary interest due to the strong competition between top-down knowledge and bottom-up attentional capture. Our results demonstrated that 1) in the 1-sec pre-stimulus interval, frontal alpha (8–12 Hz) activity was higher on trials where the salient distractor captured attention and the first saccade (bottom-up win); and 2) there was a transient pre-saccadic increase in posterior-parietal alpha (7–8 Hz) activity on trials where the first saccade went to the target (top-down win). We propose that the high frontal alpha reflects a disengagement of attentional control whereas the transient posterior alpha time-locked to the saccade indicates sensory inhibition of the salient distractor and suppression of bottom-up oculomotor capture. Public Library of Science 2011-02-28 /pmc/articles/PMC3046127/ /pubmed/21386896 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0016243 Text en Mazaheri et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Mazaheri, Ali
DiQuattro, Nicholas E.
Bengson, Jesse
Geng, Joy J.
Pre-Stimulus Activity Predicts the Winner of Top-Down vs. Bottom-Up Attentional Selection
title Pre-Stimulus Activity Predicts the Winner of Top-Down vs. Bottom-Up Attentional Selection
title_full Pre-Stimulus Activity Predicts the Winner of Top-Down vs. Bottom-Up Attentional Selection
title_fullStr Pre-Stimulus Activity Predicts the Winner of Top-Down vs. Bottom-Up Attentional Selection
title_full_unstemmed Pre-Stimulus Activity Predicts the Winner of Top-Down vs. Bottom-Up Attentional Selection
title_short Pre-Stimulus Activity Predicts the Winner of Top-Down vs. Bottom-Up Attentional Selection
title_sort pre-stimulus activity predicts the winner of top-down vs. bottom-up attentional selection
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3046127/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21386896
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0016243
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