Brain Structures Involved in Visual Search in the Presence and Absence of Color Singletons

It is still debated to what degree top–down and bottom–up driven attentional control processes are subserved by shared or by separate mechanisms. Interactions between these attentional control forms were investigated using a rapid event-related fMRI design, using an attentional search task. Following a prestimulus mask, target stimuli (consisting of a letter C or a mirror image of the C, enclosed in a diamond outline) were presented either at one unique location among three nontarget items (consisting of a random letter, enclosed in a circle outline; 50% probability), or at all four possible target locations (also 50% probability). On half the trials, irrelevant color singletons were presented, consisting of a color change of one of the four prestimulus masks, just prior to target appearance. Participants were required to search for a target letter inside the diamond and report its orientation. Results indicate that, in addition to a common network of parietal areas, medial frontal cortex is uniquely involved in top–down orienting, whereas bottom–up control is mainly subserved by a network of occipital and parietal areas. Additionally, we found that participants who were better able to suppress orienting to the color singleton showed middle frontal gyrus activation, and that the degree of top–down control correlated with insular activity. We conclude that, in addition to a common set of parietal areas, separate brain areas are involved in top–down and bottom–up driven attentional control, and that frontal areas play a role in the suppression of attentional capture by an irrelevant color singleton.

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Top–Down Attentional Control in Parkinson's Disease: Salient Considerations

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience ◽

10.1162/jocn.2009.21227 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 22 (5) ◽

pp. 848-859 ◽

Cited By ~ 50

Author(s):

Roshan Cools ◽

Robert Rogers ◽

Roger A. Barker ◽

Trevor W. Robbins

Keyword(s):

Parkinson’S Disease ◽

Parkinson's Disease ◽

Attentional Control ◽

Direct Evidence ◽

Control Mechanisms ◽

Set Shifting ◽

Top Down ◽

Bottom Up ◽

Salient Dimension ◽

Dimensional Salience

Cognitive dysfunction in Parkinson's disease (PD) has been hypothesized to reflect a failure of cortical control. In keeping with this hypothesis, some of the cognitive deficits in PD resemble those seen in patients with lesions in the lateral pFC, which has been associated with top–down attentional control. However, there is no direct evidence for a failure of top–down control mechanisms in PD. Here we fill this gap by demonstrating disproportionate control by bottom–up attention to dimensional salience during attentional set shifting. Patients needed significantly more trials to criterion than did controls when shifting to a low-salient dimension while, remarkably, needing significantly fewer trials to criterion than did controls when shifting to a high-salient dimension. Thus, attention was captured by bottom–up attention to salient information to a greater extent in patients than in controls. The results provide a striking reinterpretation of prior set-shifting data and provide the first direct evidence for a failure of top–down attentional control, resembling that seen after catecholamine depletion in the pFC.

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An EEG study of the combined effects of top-down and bottom-up attentional selection under varying task difficulty

10.31234/osf.io/4cxmv ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Einat Rashal ◽

Mehdi Senoussi ◽

Elisa Santandrea ◽

Suliann Ben Hamed ◽

Emiliano Macaluso ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Visual Search ◽

Attentional Control ◽

Task Difficulty ◽

Target Selection ◽

Attentional Selection ◽

Combined Effects ◽

Top Down ◽

Bottom Up ◽

Search Tasks

This work reports an investigation of the effect of combined top-down and bottom-up attentional control sources, using known attention-related EEG components that are thought to reflect target selection (N2pc) and distractor suppression (PD), in easy and difficult visual search tasks.

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Enhancement and Suppression Flexibly Guide Attention

Psychological Science ◽

10.1177/0956797619878813 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 30 (12) ◽

pp. 1724-1732 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Seah Chang ◽

Howard E. Egeth

Keyword(s):

Color Singleton ◽

Top Down ◽

Target Feature ◽

Attentional Guidance ◽

Feature Enhancement ◽

Letter Target ◽

Irrelevant Color

Previous research suggests that observers can suppress salient-but-irrelevant stimuli in a top-down manner. However, one question left unresolved is whether such suppression is, in fact, solely due to distractor-feature suppression or whether it instead also reflects some degree of target-feature enhancement. The present study ( N = 60) addressed this issue. On search trials (70% of trials), participants searched for a shape target when an irrelevant color singleton was either present or absent; performance was better when a color singleton was present. On interleaved probe trials (30% of trials), participants searched for a letter target. Responses were faster for the letter on a target-colored item than on a neutral-colored item, whereas responses were slower for the letter on a distractor-colored item than on a neutral-colored item. The results demonstrate that target-feature enhancement and distractor-feature suppression contribute to attentional guidance independently; enhancement and suppression flexibly guide attention as the occasion demands.

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Top-down and bottom-up attentional control: On the nature of interference from a salient distractor

Perception & Psychophysics ◽

10.3758/bf03207609 ◽

1999 ◽

Vol 61 (6) ◽

pp. 1009-1023 ◽

Cited By ~ 125

Author(s):

Min-Shik Kim ◽

Kyle R. Cave

Keyword(s):

Attentional Control ◽

Top Down ◽

Bottom Up

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A critical role of temporoparietal junction in the integration of top-down and bottom-up attentional control

Human Brain Mapping ◽

10.1002/hbm.22919 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 36 (11) ◽

pp. 4317-4333 ◽

Cited By ~ 39

Author(s):

Qiong Wu ◽

Chi-Fu Chang ◽

Sisi Xi ◽

I-Wen Huang ◽

Zuxiang Liu ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Attentional Control ◽

Critical Role ◽

Top Down ◽

Bottom Up ◽

Temporoparietal Junction

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Visional Attentional Allocation of Top-down and Bottom-up Cues in Three-Dimensional Space

Advanced Materials Research ◽

10.4028/www.scientific.net/amr.179-180.1322 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 179-180 ◽

pp. 1322-1326

Author(s):

Ru Ting Xia

Keyword(s):

Visual Attention ◽

Dimensional Space ◽

Three Dimensional ◽

Depth Information ◽

Top Down ◽

Bottom Up ◽

Attentional Allocation ◽

3D Space ◽

Target Locations ◽

Three Dimensional Space

The aim of the present experiment was to investigate visual attentional allocation of top-down and bottom-up cues in three-dimensional (3D) space. Near and far stimuli were used by a 3D attention measurement apparatus. Two experiments were conducted in order to examine top-down and bottom-up controls of visual attention. In the experiment 1, the cue about the location of a target by means of location information. In the experiment 2, color cue by brief change of color at target locations was presented. Observers were required to judge whether the target presented nearer than fixation point or further than it. The results in experiment 1 and experiment 2 show that both location and color cue have the effect on reaction time, and that shift of attention were faster from far to near than the reverse. These findings suggest that (1) attention in 3D space might be operated with both location and color controls included the depth information, (2) the shift of visual attention in 3D space has an asymmetric characteristic in depth.

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Attentional Capture by Salient Distractors during Visual Search Is Determined by Temporal Task Demands

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience ◽

10.1162/jocn_a_00127 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 24 (3) ◽

pp. 749-759 ◽

Cited By ~ 80

Author(s):

Monika Kiss ◽

Anna Grubert ◽

Anders Petersen ◽

Martin Eimer

Keyword(s):

Attentional Capture ◽

Critical Role ◽

Strong Support ◽

Task Demands ◽

Time Range ◽

Top Down ◽

Bottom Up ◽

Response Onset ◽

Irrelevant Color ◽

Task Irrelevant

The question whether attentional capture by salient but task-irrelevant visual stimuli is triggered in a bottom–up fashion or depends on top–down task settings is still unresolved. Strong support for bottom–up capture was obtained in the additional singleton task, in which search arrays were visible until response onset. Equally strong evidence for top–down control of attentional capture was obtained in spatial cueing experiments in which display durations were very brief. To demonstrate the critical role of temporal task demands on salience-driven attentional capture, we measured ERP indicators of capture by task-irrelevant color singletons in search arrays that could also contain a shape target. In Experiment 1, all displays were visible until response onset. In Experiment 2, display duration was limited to 200 msec. With long display durations, color singleton distractors elicited an N2pc component that was followed by a late Pd component, suggesting that they triggered attentional capture, which was later replaced by location-specific inhibition. When search arrays were visible for only 200 msec, the distractor-elicited N2pc was eliminated and was replaced by a Pd component in the same time range, indicative of rapid suppression of capture. Results show that attentional capture by salient distractors can be inhibited for short-duration search displays, in which it would interfere with target processing. They demonstrate that salience-driven capture is not a purely bottom–up phenomenon but is subject to top–down control.

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