scholarly journals ERP Evidence for Cross-Modal Audiovisual Effects of Endogenous Spatial Attention within Hemifields

2004 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 272-288 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Eimer ◽  
José van Velzen ◽  
Jon Driver
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Attention ◽  
Visual Stimuli ◽  
Focus Of Attention ◽  
Modal Interactions ◽  
Spatial Selection ◽  
Task Relevance ◽  
Auditory Erps ◽  
Task Irrelevant ◽  
Directing Attention ◽  
Primary Modality

Previous ERP studies have uncovered cross-modal interactions in endogenous spatial attention. Directing attention to one side to judge stimuli from one particular modality can modulate early modality-specific ERP components not only for that modality, but also for other currently irrelevant modalities. However, past studies could not determine whether the spatial focus of attention in the task-irrelevant secondary modality was similar to the primary modality, or was instead diffuse across one hemifield. Here, auditory or visual stimuli could appear at any one of four locations (two on each side). In different blocks, subjects judged stimuli at only one of these four locations, for an auditory (Experiment 1) or visual (Experiment 2) task. Early attentional modulations of visual and auditory ERPs were found for stimuli at the currently relevant location, compared with those at the irrelevant location within the same hemifield, thus demonstrating within-hemifield tuning of spatial attention. Crucially, this was found not only for the currently relevant modality, but also for the currently irrelevant modality. Moreover, these within-hemifield attention effects were statistically equivalent regardless of the task relevance of the modality, for both the auditory and visual ERP data. These results demonstrate that within-hemifield spatial attention for one task-relevant modality can transfer cross-modally to a task-irrelevant modality, consistent with spatial selection at a multimodal level of representation.

scholarly journals Cross-Modal Interactions between Audition, Touch, and Vision in Endogenous Spatial Attention: ERP Evidence on Preparatory States and Sensory Modulations

2002 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 254-271 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Eimer ◽  
José van Velzen ◽  
Jon Driver
Keyword(s):  
Visual Attention ◽  
Spatial Attention ◽  
Attentional Control ◽  
Control Mechanisms ◽  
Modal Interactions ◽  
Directed Attention ◽  
Brain Potential ◽  
Auditory Erps ◽  
Task Irrelevant ◽  
Anterior Negativity

Recent behavioral and event-related brain potential (ERP) studies have revealed cross-modal interactions in endogenous spatial attention between vision and audition, plus vision and touch. The present ERP study investigated whether these interactions reflect supramodal attentional control mechanisms, and whether similar cross-modal interactions also exist between audition and touch. Participants directed attention to the side indicated by a cue to detect infrequent auditory or tactile targets at the cued side. The relevant modality (audition or touch) was blocked. Attentional control processes were reflected in systematic ERP modulations elicited during cued shifts of attention. An anterior negativity contralateral to the cued side was followed by a contralateral positivity at posterior sites. These effects were similar whether the cue signaled which side was relevant for audition or for touch. They also resembled previously observed ERP modulations for shifts of visual attention, thus implicating supramodal mechanisms in the control of spatial attention. Following each cue, single auditory, tactile, or visual stimuli were presented at the cued or uncued side. Although stimuli in task-irrelevant modalities could be completely ignored, visual and auditory ERPs were nevertheless affected by spatial attention when touch was relevant, revealing cross-modal interactions. When audition was relevant, visual ERPs, but not tactile ERPs, were affected by spatial attention, indicating that touch can be decoupled from cross-modal attention when task-irrelevant.

scholarly journals Additive and interactive effects of spatial attention and expectation on perceptual decisions

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arianna Zuanazzi ◽  
Uta Noppeney
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Attention ◽  
Interactive Effects ◽  
Signal Probability ◽  
Direct Influence ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Perceptual Inference ◽  
Effective Interactions ◽  
Task Relevance ◽  
Task Irrelevant

AbstractSpatial attention and expectation are two critical top-down mechanisms controlling perceptual inference. Based on previous research it remains unclear whether their influence on perceptual decisions is additive or interactive.We developed a novel multisensory approach that orthogonally manipulated spatial attention (i.e. task relevance) and expectation (i.e. signal probability) selectively in audition and evaluated their effects on observers’ responses in vision. Critically, while experiment 1 manipulated expectation directly via the probability of task-relevant auditory targets across hemifields, experiment 2 manipulated it indirectly via task-irrelevant auditory non-targets.Surprisingly, our results demonstrate that spatial attention and signal probability influence perceptual decisions either additively or interactively. These seemingly contradictory results can be explained parsimoniously by a model that combines spatial attention, general and spatially selective response probabilities as predictors with no direct influence of signal probability. Our model provides a novel perspective on how spatial attention and expectations facilitate effective interactions with the environment.

scholarly journals Modality-specific and multisensory mechanisms of spatial attention and expectation

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arianna Zuanazzi ◽  
Uta Noppeney
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Attention ◽  
Natural Environment ◽  
Sensory Modality ◽  
Behavioral Effects ◽  
Signal Probability ◽  
Task Relevance ◽  
Sensory Modalities ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Primary Modality

AbstractIn our natural environment, the brain needs to combine signals from multiple sensory modalities into a coherent percept. While spatial attention guides perceptual decisions by prioritizing processing of signals that are task-relevant, spatial expectations encode the probability of signals over space. Previous studies have shown that behavioral effects of spatial attention generalize across sensory modalities. However, because they manipulated spatial attention as signal probability over space, these studies could not dissociate attention and expectation or assess their interaction.In two experiments, we orthogonally manipulated spatial attention (i.e., task-relevance) and expectation (i.e., signal probability) selectively in one sensory modality (i.e., primary modality) (experiment 1: audition, experiment 2: vision) and assessed their effects on primary and secondary sensory modalities in which attention and expectation were held constant.Our results show behavioral effects of spatial attention that are comparable for audition and vision as primary modalities; yet, signal probabilities were learnt more slowly in audition, so that spatial expectations were formed later in audition than vision. Critically, when these differences in learning between audition and vision were accounted for, both spatial attention and expectation affected responses more strongly in the primary modality in which they were manipulated, and generalized to the secondary modality only in an attenuated fashion. Collectively, our results suggest that both spatial attention and expectation rely on modality-specific and multisensory mechanisms.

scholarly journals Sustained Spatial Attention in Touch: Modality-Specific and Multimodal Mechanisms

2011 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 199-213 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chiara F. Sambo ◽  
Bettina Forster
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Attention ◽  
The Body ◽  
Attentional Modulation ◽  
Spatial Selection ◽  
Tactile Stimuli ◽  
Body Location ◽  
Spatial Coordinates ◽  
Selection Tasks ◽  
Task Irrelevant ◽  
Somatosensory Areas

Sustained attention to a body location results in enhanced processing of tactile stimuli presented at that location compared to another unattended location. In this paper, we review studies investigating the neural correlates of sustained spatial attention in touch. These studies consistently show that activity within modality-specific somatosensory areas (SI and SII) is modulated by sustained tactile-spatial attention. Recent evidence suggests that these somatosensory areas may be recruited as part of a larger cortical network,also including higher-level multimodal regions involved in spatial selection across modalities. We discuss, in turn, the following multimodal effects in sustained tactile-spatial attention tasks. First, cross-modal attentional links between touch and vision, reflected in enhanced processing of task-irrelevant visual stimuli at tactuallyattended locations, are mediated by common (multimodal) representations of external space. Second, vision of the body modulates activity underlying sustained tactile-spatial attention, facilitating attentional modulation of tactile processing in between-hand (when hands are sufficiently far apart) and impairing attentional modulation in within-hand selection tasks. Finally, body posture influences mechanisms of sustained tactile-spatial attention, relying, at least partly, on remapping of tactile stimuli in external, visuallydefined, spatial coordinates. Taken together, the findings reviewed in this paper indicate that sustained spatial attention in touch is subserved by both modality-specific and multimodal mechanisms. The interplay between these mechanisms allows flexible and efficient spatial selection within and across sensory modalities.

Task-Relevance Modulates the Effects of Peripheral Distractors

2007 ◽  
Vol 60 (9) ◽  
pp. 1216-1226 ◽  
Author(s):  
Limor Lichtenstein-Vidne ◽  
Avishai Henik ◽  
Ziad Safadi
Keyword(s):  
Relevant Information ◽  
Irrelevant Information ◽  
Focus Of Attention ◽  
Task Relevance ◽  
Task Irrelevant

The current study investigated whether task-relevant information affects performance differently from how information that is not relevant for the task does when presented peripherally and centrally. In three experiments a target appeared inside the focus of attention, whereas a to-be-ignored distractor appeared either in the periphery (Experiments 1 and 2) or at the centre (Experiment 3) of attention. In each trial the distractor carried both task-relevant and irrelevant information. The results confirmed the “task relevance” hypothesis: Task-irrelevant information affected performance only when it appeared at the centre of attention, whereas task-relevant information affected performance when it appeared inside as well as outside the main focus of attention. The current results do not support suggestions that spatial stimuli (e.g., arrows) draw attention automatically regardless of task relevance.

Visual disgust-elicitors produce an attentional blink independent of contextual and trait-level pathogen avoidance

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paola Perone ◽  
David Vaughn Becker ◽  
Joshua M. Tybur
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Visual Attention ◽  
Attentional Blink ◽  
Attentional Bias ◽  
Visual Stimuli ◽  
Attentional Biases ◽  
Attentional Processing ◽  
Trait Level ◽  
Task Irrelevant ◽  
Pathogen Avoidance

Multiple studies report that disgust-eliciting stimuli are perceived as salient and subsequently capture selective attention. In the current study, we aimed to better understand the nature of temporal attentional biases toward disgust-eliciting stimuli and to investigate the extent to which these biases are sensitive to contextual and trait-level pathogen avoidance motives. Participants (N=116) performed in an Emotional Attentional Blink (EAB) task in which task-irrelevant disgust-eliciting, fear-eliciting, or neutral images preceded a target by 200, 500, or 800 milliseconds (i.e., lag two, five and eight respectively). They did so twice - once while not exposed to an odor, and once while exposed to either an odor that elicited disgust or an odor that did not - and completed a measure of disgust sensitivity. Results indicate that disgust-eliciting visual stimuli produced a greater attentional blink than neutral visual stimuli at lag two and a greater attentional blink than fear-eliciting visual stimuli at both lag two and at lag five. Neither the odor manipulations nor individual differences measures moderated this effect. We propose that visual attention is engaged for a longer period of time following disgust-eliciting stimuli because covert processes automatically initiate the evaluation of pathogen threats. The fact that state and trait pathogen avoidance do not influence this temporal attentional bias suggests that early attentional processing of pathogen cues is initiated independent from the context in which such cues are perceived.

Dynamics of Within-, Inter-, and Cross-Modal Attentional Modulation

2011 ◽  
Vol 105 (2) ◽  
pp. 674-686 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tetsuo Kida ◽  
Koji Inui ◽  
Emi Tanaka ◽  
Ryusuke Kakigi
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Attention ◽  
Interstimulus Interval ◽  
Temporal Dynamics ◽  
Visual Stimulation ◽  
The Other ◽  
Neural Representations ◽  
Tactile Stimuli ◽  
Sensory Modalities ◽  
The Right ◽  
Directing Attention

Numerous studies have demonstrated effects of spatial attention within single sensory modalities (within-modal spatial attention) and the effect of directing attention to one sense compared with the other senses (intermodal attention) on cortical neuronal activity. Furthermore, recent studies have been revealing that the effects of spatial attention directed to a certain location in a certain sense spread to the other senses at the same location in space (cross-modal spatial attention). The present study used magnetoencephalography to examine the temporal dynamics of the effects of within-modal and cross-modal spatial and intermodal attention on cortical processes responsive to visual stimuli. Visual or tactile stimuli were randomly presented on the left or right side at a random interstimulus interval and subjects directed attention to the left or right when vision or touch was a task-relevant modality. Sensor-space analysis showed that a response around the occipitotemporal region at around 150 ms after visual stimulation was significantly enhanced by within-modal, cross-modal spatial, and intermodal attention. A later response over the right frontal region at around 200 ms was enhanced by within-modal spatial and intermodal attention, but not by cross-modal spatial attention. These effects were estimated to originate from the occipitotemporal and lateral frontal areas, respectively. Thus the results suggest different spatiotemporal dynamics of neural representations of cross-modal attention and intermodal or within-modal attention.

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