Cortical Response to Task-relevant Stimuli Presented outside the Primary Focus of Attention

2010 ◽  
Vol 22 (9) ◽  
pp. 1980-1992 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roos Houtkamp ◽  
Jochen Braun
Keyword(s):  
Dual Task ◽  
Control Experiment ◽  
Iconic Memory ◽  
Focus Of Attention ◽  
Peripheral Stimulus ◽  
Behavioral Performance ◽  
Bold Response ◽  
Attentional Modulation ◽  
Memory Persistence ◽  
Primary Focus

Visual attention selectively enhances the neural response to a task-relevant item. But what happens when an item outside the primary focus of attention is also relevant to the task at hand? In a dual-task fMRI experiment, we studied the responses in retinotopically organized visual cortex in such a situation. Observers performed an attention-demanding task in the fovea while another, unmasked stimulus appeared in the visual periphery. With respect to this latter stimulus, observers attempted to perform either a less or a more attentionally demanding task. Both tasks increased the BOLD response to the peripheral stimulus. Behaviorally, however, only the less demanding task was performed well, whereas the demanding task was carried out near chance. What could explain the discrepancy between BOLD response and behavioral performance? A control experiment revealed that the report of the less demanding feature was severely disturbed by a mask. Moreover, the visual attributes queried by the demanding task had a significantly shorter iconic memory persistence. We conclude that, in the dual-task situation, the focus of attention initially remains with the foveal task, but subsequently shifts to the former location of the peripheral stimulus. Such a belated shift to a peripheral iconic memory (futile in one case, informative in the other) would reconcile the similar BOLD response with the disparate behavioral performance. In summary, our results show that an enhanced BOLD response is consistently associated with attentional modulation, but not with behavioral performance.

Rethinking 'Regional Industrial Relations': Space, Place and the Social Relations of Work

1999 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 536-560 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bradon Ellem ◽  
John Shields
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Industrial Relations ◽  
Focus Of Attention ◽  
Local Modes ◽  
Labour Relations ◽  
Strategic Orientations ◽  
Local Labour ◽  
The Social ◽  
Primary Focus ◽  
Labour Regulation

The dismantling of centralised modes of labour regulation and the emergence of new spatial divisions of labour under 'globalisation' have produced renewed interest in 'regional industrial relations'. Yet much of the existing literature in this genre—and industrial relations scholarship in general—remains wedded to a positivist conception of space. The most promising avenues for reconceptualising the spatiality of capital-labour relations are to be found in the work of radical economic geographers. They recognise that space itself is a human construct and that capital and labour have differing mobilities and, therefore, different subjective and strategic orientations to space and to particular places. From these premises, they argue that local labour markets are the points of intersection between production and reproduction and the primary focus of attention of local modes of labour regulation. These insights, we suggest, provide the means to rethink what has been described as regional industrial relations and capital- labour relations more generally.

scholarly journals Effects of Task Difficulty and Target Likelihood in Area V4 of Macaque Monkeys

2006 ◽  
Vol 96 (5) ◽  
pp. 2377-2387 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Elizabeth Boudreau ◽  
Tori H. Williford ◽  
John H. R. Maunsell
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Attention ◽  
Cortical Neurons ◽  
Task Difficulty ◽  
Focus Of Attention ◽  
Behavioral Performance ◽  
Neuronal Responses ◽  
Fixed Amount ◽  
Processing Resource ◽  
Area V4 ◽  
Sensory Responses

Spatial attention improves performance at attended locations and correspondingly modulates firing rates of cortical neurons. The size of these behavioral and neuronal effects depends on the difficulty of the task performed at the attended location. Psychological theorists have attributed this to a tighter focus of a fixed amount of processing resource at the attended location, but the effects of task difficulty on the distribution of neuronal effects of attention across the visual field have not been fully explored. We trained rhesus monkeys to do a detection task in which difficulty and spatial attention were manipulated independently. Probe stimuli were used to measure behavioral performance in different conditions of attention and difficulty. Animals performed better at attended locations and this advantage increased with difficulty, consistent with data from human psychophysics. Neuronal modulation by spatial attention was larger with greater difficulty. In two animals, increasing difficulty caused a modest increase in neuronal responses to visual stimuli regardless of the locus of spatial attention. In a third animal, which was previously trained to ignore multiple distracting stimuli, increasing task difficulty increased responses at the focus of attention and suppressed responses away from the focus of attention. The results show that difficulty can modulate effects of spatial attention in V4; it can alter the distribution of sensory responses across the visual scene in ways that may depend on the subject's behavioral strategy.

scholarly journals Direction and magnitude of nicotine effects on the fMRI BOLD response are related to nicotine effects on behavioral performance

2011 ◽  
Vol 215 (2) ◽  
pp. 333-344 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tracy Warbrick ◽  
Arian Mobascher ◽  
Juergen Brinkmeyer ◽  
Francesco Musso ◽  
Tony Stoecker ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Behavioral Performance ◽  
Bold Response

Lactate transporters in the rat barrel cortex sustain whisker-dependent BOLD fMRI signal and behavioral performance

2021 ◽  
Vol 118 (47) ◽  
pp. e2112466118
Author(s):  
Hélène Roumes ◽  
Charlotte Jollé ◽  
Jordy Blanc ◽  
Imad Benkhaled ◽  
Carolina Piletti Chatain ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Barrel Cortex ◽  
Recognition Task ◽  
Brain Activation ◽  
Functional Brain Imaging ◽  
Cortical Activation ◽  
Resonance Spectroscopy ◽  
Behavioral Performance ◽  
Bold Response ◽  
Metabolic Cooperation ◽  
Bold Fmri

Lactate is an efficient neuronal energy source, even in presence of glucose. However, the importance of lactate shuttling between astrocytes and neurons for brain activation and function remains to be established. For this purpose, metabolic and hemodynamic responses to sensory stimulation have been measured by functional magnetic resonance spectroscopy and blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) fMRI after down-regulation of either neuronal MCT2 or astroglial MCT4 in the rat barrel cortex. Results show that the lactate rise in the barrel cortex upon whisker stimulation is abolished when either transporter is down-regulated. Under the same paradigm, the BOLD response is prevented in all MCT2 down-regulated rats, while about half of the MCT4 down-regulated rats exhibited a loss of the BOLD response. Interestingly, MCT4 down-regulated animals showing no BOLD response were rescued by peripheral lactate infusion, while this treatment had no effect on MCT2 down-regulated rats. When animals were tested in a novel object recognition task, MCT2 down-regulated animals were impaired in the textured but not in the visual version of the task. For MCT4 down-regulated animals, while all animal succeeded in the visual task, half of them exhibited a deficit in the textured task, a similar segregation into two groups as observed for BOLD experiments. Our data demonstrate that lactate shuttling between astrocytes and neurons is essential to give rise to both neurometabolic and neurovascular couplings, which form the basis for the detection of brain activation by functional brain imaging techniques. Moreover, our results establish that this metabolic cooperation is required to sustain behavioral performance based on cortical activation.

An External Skill Focus is Necessary to Enhance Performance

2014 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 37-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Russell ◽  
Jared Porter ◽  
Olivia Campbell
Keyword(s):  
Dual Task ◽  
Attentional Focus ◽  
Focus Of Attention ◽  
Primary Task ◽  
Performance Improvements ◽  
External Focus ◽  
Throwing Accuracy ◽  
Internal Focus ◽  
Dart Throwing ◽  
Dual Task Paradigm

This study examined the interaction between a skill/extraneous attentional focus and an internal/external focus of attention using a dual-task paradigm. Thirty-two low-skill participants completed a primary dart-throwing task with their dominant arm while simultaneously performing a secondary arm-stabilizing task with their nondominant arm. Two aspects of the participants’ attentional focus were manipulated: skill versus extraneous focus and external versus internal focus. Participants completed 120 trials across four conditions created by combining the dimensions of the two variables. Performance on the primary task was assessed by measuring throwing accuracy and the kinematics of the throwing action. Results indicated that accuracy improved under the external, skill-oriented condition relative to all other conditions; no differences between the remaining conditions were observed. These findings suggest that an external, skill-oriented focus of attention is needed to facilitate performance improvements in novices.

Change Detection on Periphery and Dual-Task Performance

2002 ◽  
Vol 46 (17) ◽  
pp. 1645-1648 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mon-Chu Chen ◽  
Filipe Fortes ◽  
Roberta Klatzky ◽  
William Long
Keyword(s):  
Reaction Time ◽  
Visual Field ◽  
Change Detection ◽  
Task Performance ◽  
Dual Task ◽  
Detection Rate ◽  
Peripheral Vision ◽  
Primary Task ◽  
Peripheral Stimulus ◽  
Dual Task Performance

A variation of the Wickens' Task was performed to examine the assumption that people can detect certain stimuli on their periphery without decreasing the performance of the primary task. Participants were instructed to respond to a change in a peripheral stimulus without shifting their gaze from a primary task in the center of their visual field. Our data suggests that both type and magnitude of change have a significant effect on detection rate and reaction time. The data also suggests that the performance of the primary task did not decay after the change of the stimuli occurred. Based on these findings, we argue that people can detect various types of changes without shifting gaze and without degrading task performance. Therefore, an interface particularly designed for peripheral vision is possible, and it will potentially provide benefits to both productivity and safety.

Attentional modulation in the human visual cortex: The time-course of the BOLD response and its implications

NeuroImage ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 328-334 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew T. Smith ◽  
Nathalie M. Cotillon-Williams ◽  
Adrian L. Williams
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cortex ◽  
Time Course ◽  
Bold Response ◽  
Attentional Modulation ◽  
Human Visual Cortex

scholarly journals Meter without rhythmic pattern repetitions increases pre-attentive processing

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rui Pedro de Sousa Gomes
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Load ◽  
Dual Task ◽  
Temporal Structure ◽  
Temporal Orientation ◽  
Behavioral Performance ◽  
Rhythmic Pattern ◽  
Task Context ◽  
Temporal Expectation ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Pattern Repetition

Processing musical meter – the organization of time into regular cycles of strong and weak beats – requires abstraction from the varying rhythmic surface. Several studies investigated whether meter processing requires attention, or if it can be both pre-attentive and attentive. While findings on temporal expectation (processing meter per se) indicated benefits of attention, studies on meter processing in a more complex, dual-task context (meter used for temporal orientation) consistently reported pre-attentive processing. Also, while surface-based approaches to meter (meter aided by pattern repetition) showed some benefits of attention, structural approaches (meter not aided by pattern repetition, increased complexity) found pre-attentive-only processing. Therefore, in the present study we hypothesized that pre-attentive processing increases with cognitive load, and we compared surface with structural meter processing. Supporting our hypothesis, we saw improved behavioral performance for surface meter, as well as EEG evidence that structural meter elicits pre-attentive processing (pre-attentive P1) while surface meter does not (attentive-only P1). Our findings highlight the need for increased awareness in approaches to meter processing and support the idea that increased cognitive demand may recruit pre-attentive processing of temporal structure.

scholarly journals Documenting Subjective Interpretations of Illustrated Book Covers for Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

2014 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Piotr Michura ◽  
Stan Ruecker ◽  
Gerry Derksen ◽  
Milena Radzikowska ◽  
Teresa Dobson
Keyword(s):  
Visual Information ◽  
Focus Of Attention ◽  
Subjective Interpretation ◽  
New Knowledge ◽  
Book Covers ◽  
Primary Focus ◽  
Alice's Adventures In Wonderland ◽  
Alice’S Adventures In Wonderland ◽  
Illustrated Book

In the Implementing New Knowledge Environments (INKE) project, our primary focus of attention has been on text. In this paper, we discuss our recent innovations in finding ways to capture the subjective interpretation of visual information that has in some way been connected with texts. Previous work has focused on test-based semantic differentials, but our current project extends beyond to triads, and beyond text-based difference poles to image-based difference poles. As our case study, we apply the method to illustrated book covers for Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

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