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EEG Alpha Power Is Modulated by Attentional Changes during Cognitive Tasks and Virtual Reality Immersion

Variations in alpha rhythm have a significant role in perception and attention. Recently, alpha decrease has been associated with externally directed attention, especially in the visual domain, whereas alpha increase has been related to internal processing such as mental arithmetic. However, the rol...

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Autores principales: Magosso, Elisa, De Crescenzio, Francesca, Ricci, Giulia, Piastra, Sergio, Ursino, Mauro
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Hindawi 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6614966/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31341468
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2019/7051079
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author Magosso, Elisa
De Crescenzio, Francesca
Ricci, Giulia
Piastra, Sergio
Ursino, Mauro
author_facet Magosso, Elisa
De Crescenzio, Francesca
Ricci, Giulia
Piastra, Sergio
Ursino, Mauro
author_sort Magosso, Elisa
collection PubMed
description Variations in alpha rhythm have a significant role in perception and attention. Recently, alpha decrease has been associated with externally directed attention, especially in the visual domain, whereas alpha increase has been related to internal processing such as mental arithmetic. However, the role of alpha oscillations and how the different components of a task (processing of external stimuli, internal manipulation/representation, and task demand) interact to affect alpha power are still unclear. Here, we investigate how alpha power is differently modulated by attentional tasks depending both on task difficulty (less/more demanding task) and direction of attention (internal/external). To this aim, we designed two experiments that differently manipulated these aspects. Experiment 1, outside Virtual Reality (VR), involved two tasks both requiring internal and external attentional components (intake of visual items for their internal manipulation) but with different internal task demands (arithmetic vs. reading). Experiment 2 took advantage of the VR (mimicking an aircraft cabin interior) to manipulate attention direction: it included a condition of VR immersion only, characterized by visual external attention, and a condition of a purely mental arithmetic task during VR immersion, requiring neglect of sensory stimuli. Results show that: (1) In line with previous studies, visual external attention caused a significant alpha decrease, especially in parieto-occipital regions; (2) Alpha decrease was significantly larger during the more demanding arithmetic task, when the task was driven by external visual stimuli; (3) Alpha dramatically increased during the purely mental task in VR immersion, whereby the external stimuli had no relation with the task. Our results suggest that alpha power is crucial to isolate a subject from the environment, and move attention from external to internal cues. Moreover, they emphasize that the emerging use of VR associated with EEG may have important implications to study brain rhythms and support the design of artificial systems.
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spelling pubmed-66149662019-07-24 EEG Alpha Power Is Modulated by Attentional Changes during Cognitive Tasks and Virtual Reality Immersion Magosso, Elisa De Crescenzio, Francesca Ricci, Giulia Piastra, Sergio Ursino, Mauro Comput Intell Neurosci Research Article Variations in alpha rhythm have a significant role in perception and attention. Recently, alpha decrease has been associated with externally directed attention, especially in the visual domain, whereas alpha increase has been related to internal processing such as mental arithmetic. However, the role of alpha oscillations and how the different components of a task (processing of external stimuli, internal manipulation/representation, and task demand) interact to affect alpha power are still unclear. Here, we investigate how alpha power is differently modulated by attentional tasks depending both on task difficulty (less/more demanding task) and direction of attention (internal/external). To this aim, we designed two experiments that differently manipulated these aspects. Experiment 1, outside Virtual Reality (VR), involved two tasks both requiring internal and external attentional components (intake of visual items for their internal manipulation) but with different internal task demands (arithmetic vs. reading). Experiment 2 took advantage of the VR (mimicking an aircraft cabin interior) to manipulate attention direction: it included a condition of VR immersion only, characterized by visual external attention, and a condition of a purely mental arithmetic task during VR immersion, requiring neglect of sensory stimuli. Results show that: (1) In line with previous studies, visual external attention caused a significant alpha decrease, especially in parieto-occipital regions; (2) Alpha decrease was significantly larger during the more demanding arithmetic task, when the task was driven by external visual stimuli; (3) Alpha dramatically increased during the purely mental task in VR immersion, whereby the external stimuli had no relation with the task. Our results suggest that alpha power is crucial to isolate a subject from the environment, and move attention from external to internal cues. Moreover, they emphasize that the emerging use of VR associated with EEG may have important implications to study brain rhythms and support the design of artificial systems. Hindawi 2019-06-25 /pmc/articles/PMC6614966/ /pubmed/31341468 http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2019/7051079 Text en Copyright © 2019 Elisa Magosso et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Magosso, Elisa
De Crescenzio, Francesca
Ricci, Giulia
Piastra, Sergio
Ursino, Mauro
EEG Alpha Power Is Modulated by Attentional Changes during Cognitive Tasks and Virtual Reality Immersion
title EEG Alpha Power Is Modulated by Attentional Changes during Cognitive Tasks and Virtual Reality Immersion
title_full EEG Alpha Power Is Modulated by Attentional Changes during Cognitive Tasks and Virtual Reality Immersion
title_fullStr EEG Alpha Power Is Modulated by Attentional Changes during Cognitive Tasks and Virtual Reality Immersion
title_full_unstemmed EEG Alpha Power Is Modulated by Attentional Changes during Cognitive Tasks and Virtual Reality Immersion
title_short EEG Alpha Power Is Modulated by Attentional Changes during Cognitive Tasks and Virtual Reality Immersion
title_sort eeg alpha power is modulated by attentional changes during cognitive tasks and virtual reality immersion
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6614966/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31341468
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2019/7051079
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