scholarly journals Neuronal congruency effects in macaque frontal cortex

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tao Yao ◽  
Wim Vanduffel
Keyword(s):  
Selective Attention ◽  
Frontal Cortex ◽  
Congruency Effect ◽  
Irrelevant Stimulus ◽  
Relative Activity ◽  
Behavioral Performance ◽  
Activity Levels ◽  
Neuronal Mechanisms ◽  
Stimulus Features ◽  
Task Irrelevant

Abstract The interplay between task-relevant and task-irrelevant stimulus features induces conflicts which impair human behavioral performance in many perceptual and cognitive tasks, a.k.a. a behavioral congruency effect. The neuronal mechanisms underlying behavioral congruency effects, however, are poorly understood. We recorded single unit activity in monkey frontal cortex using a novel task-switching paradigm and discovered a neuronal congruency effect that is carried by task-relevant and -irrelevant neurons. The former neurons provide more signal, the latter less noise in congruent compared to incongruent conditions. Their relative activity levels determine the neuronal congruency effect and behavioral performance. Although these neuronal congruency signals are sensitive to selective attention, they cannot be entirely explained by selective attention as gauged by response time. We propose that such neuronal congruency effects can explain behavioral congruency effects in general, as well as previous fMRI and EEG results in various conflict paradigms.

Perceptual Deficit in Schizophrenia: A Defect in Redundancy Utilization, Filtering or Scanning?

1980 ◽  
Vol 137 (4) ◽  
pp. 352-360 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. J. Caudrey ◽  
K. Kirk ◽  
P. C. Thomas ◽  
K. O. Ng
Keyword(s):  
Selective Attention ◽  
Irrelevant Stimulus ◽  
Relevant Stimulus ◽  
Control Groups ◽  
Perceptual Field ◽  
Schizophrenic Patients ◽  
Stimulus Features ◽  
Feature Dimension ◽  
Selective Attention Deficits ◽  
Holistic Manner

SummaryThe perception by schizophrenic patients of stimuli with more than one feature (dimension) was investigated using psychiatric and non-psychiatric control groups. Indices of the ability (a) to make use of redundant stimulus cues, (b) to ‘screen out’ or filter irrelevant stimulus features, and (c) to scan the perceptual field for relevant stimulus features, indicated that only filtering was consistently poor in schizophrenia. It has been suggested that the schizophrenic patient may tend to perceive his environment in an undifferentiated holistic manner rather than in an analytic manner and the implication for the theory of left hemisphere pathology in schizophrenia is discussed. However, the performance of the schizophrenic subjects did not differ significantly from that of the group of depressed patients, which suggests that the selective attention deficits previously observed in schizophrenia are not specific to the disorder.

scholarly journals Context-specific proportion congruent effects: Compound-cue contingency learning in disguise

2018 ◽  
Vol 72 (5) ◽  
pp. 1119-1130 ◽  
Author(s):  
James R Schmidt ◽  
Céline Lemercier
Keyword(s):  
Attentional Control ◽  
Congruency Effect ◽  
Irrelevant Stimulus ◽  
Response Speed ◽  
Contingency Learning ◽  
Conflict Monitoring ◽  
Stroop Paradigm ◽  
Context Specific ◽  
Task Irrelevant ◽  
Compound Cue

Conflict between task-relevant and task-irrelevant stimulus information leads to impairment in response speed and accuracy. For instance, in the colour-word Stroop paradigm, participants respond slower and less accurately to the print colour of incongruent colour words (e.g., “red” printed in green) than to congruent colour words (e.g., “green” in green). Importantly, this congruency effect is diminished when the trials in an experiment are mostly incongruent, relative to mostly congruent, termed a proportion congruent effect. When distracting stimuli are mostly congruent in one context (e.g., location or font) but mostly incongruent in another context (e.g., another location or font), the congruency effect is still diminished in the mostly incongruent context, termed a context-specific proportion congruent (CSPC) effect. Both the standard proportion congruent and CSPC effects are typically interpreted in terms of conflict-driven attentional control, frequently termed conflict adaptation or conflict monitoring. However, in two experiments, we investigated contingency learning confounds in context-specific proportion congruent effects. In particular, two variants of a dissociation procedure are presented with the font variant of the CSPC procedure. In both, robust contingency learning effects were observed. No evidence for context-specific control was observed. In fact, results trended in the wrong direction. In all, the results suggest that CSPC effects may not be a useful way of studying attentional control.

A Simon effect for stimulus-response duration

2002 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 581-592 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wilfried Kunde ◽  
Christian Stöcker
Keyword(s):  
Simon Effect ◽  
Response Duration ◽  
Irrelevant Stimulus ◽  
Presentation Duration ◽  
Independent Manner ◽  
Stimulus Response ◽  
Correspondence Effects ◽  
Stimulus Features ◽  
Single Response ◽  
Task Irrelevant

A non-spatial variant of the Simon effect for the stimulus-response (S-R) feature of duration is reported. In Experiment 1 subjects were required to press a single response key either briefly or longer in response to the colour of a visual stimulus that varied in its presentation duration. Short keypresses were initiated faster with short than with long stimulus duration whereas the inverse was observed with long keypresses. In Experiment 2 subjects were required to press a left or right key (according to stimulus form) either briefly or longer (according to stimulus colour). The stimuli concurrently varied in their location (left or right) and duration (short or long), which were both task irrelevant. Approximately additive correspondence effects for S-R location and S-R duration were observed. To summarize, the results suggest that the irrelevant stimulus features of location and duration are processed automatically and prime corresponding responses in an independent manner.

scholarly journals Goal-Based Binding of Irrelevant Stimulus Features for Action Slips

2021 ◽  
Vol 68 (4) ◽  
pp. 206-213
Author(s):  
Anna Foerster ◽  
Klaus Rothermund ◽  
Juhi Jayesh Parmar ◽  
Birte Moeller ◽  
Christian Frings ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Irrelevant Stimulus ◽  
Action Control ◽  
Alternative Interpretation ◽  
Concurrent Task ◽  
Cognitive System ◽  
Response Mapping ◽  
Stimulus Response ◽  
The Future ◽  
Stimulus Features ◽  
Task Irrelevant

Abstract. Binding between representations of stimuli and actions and later retrieval of these compounds provide efficient shortcuts in action control. Recent observations indicate that these mechanisms are not only effective when action episodes go as planned, but they also seem to be at play when actions go awry. Moreover, the human cognitive system even corrects traces of error commission on the fly because it binds the intended but not actually executed response to concurrent task-relevant stimuli, thus enabling retrieval of a correct, but not actually executed response when encountering the stimulus again. However, a plausible alternative interpretation of this finding is that error commission triggers selective strengthening of the instructed stimulus–response mapping instead, thus promoting its efficient application in the future. The experiment presented here makes an unequivocal case for episodic binding and retrieval in erroneous action episodes by showing binding between task-irrelevant stimuli and correct responses.

scholarly journals Longitudinal alterations in motivational salience processing in ultra-high-risk subjects for psychosis

2016 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 243-254 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Schmidt ◽  
M. Antoniades ◽  
P. Allen ◽  
A. Egerton ◽  
C. A. Chaddock ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
High Risk ◽  
Ventral Striatum ◽  
Psychotic Disorders ◽  
Irrelevant Stimulus ◽  
Psychotic Symptoms ◽  
Attribute Salience ◽  
Ultra High Risk ◽  
Stimulus Features ◽  
Task Irrelevant

BackgroundImpairments in the attribution of salience are thought to be fundamental to the development of psychotic symptoms and the onset of psychotic disorders. The aim of the present study was to explore longitudinal alterations in salience processing in ultra-high-risk subjects for psychosis.MethodA total of 23 ultra-high-risk subjects and 13 healthy controls underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging at two time points (mean interval of 17 months) while performing the Salience Attribution Test to assess neural responses to task-relevant (adaptive salience) and task-irrelevant (aberrant salience) stimulus features.ResultsAt presentation, high-risk subjects were less likely than controls to attribute salience to relevant features, and more likely to attribute salience to irrelevant stimulus features. These behavioural differences were no longer evident at follow-up. When attributing salience to relevant cue features, ultra-high-risk subjects showed less activation than controls in the ventral striatum at both baseline and follow-up. Within the high-risk sample, amelioration of abnormal beliefs over the follow-up period was correlated with an increase in right ventral striatum activation during the attribution of salience to relevant cue features.ConclusionsThese findings confirm that salience processing is perturbed in ultra-high-risk subjects for psychosis, that this is linked to alterations in ventral striatum function, and that clinical outcomes are related to longitudinal changes in ventral striatum function during salience processing.

scholarly journals Auditory selective attention is enhanced by a task-irrelevant temporally coherent visual stimulus in human listeners

eLife ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ross K Maddox ◽  
Huriye Atilgan ◽  
Jennifer K Bizley ◽  
Adrian KC Lee
Keyword(s):  
Visual Stimulus ◽  
Sound Source ◽  
Visual Cues ◽  
Irrelevant Stimulus ◽  
Auditory Selective Attention ◽  
Selective Listening ◽  
Temporal Cues ◽  
Temporal Relationships ◽  
Stimulus Features ◽  
Task Irrelevant

In noisy settings, listening is aided by correlated dynamic visual cues gleaned from a talker's face—an improvement often attributed to visually reinforced linguistic information. In this study, we aimed to test the effect of audio–visual temporal coherence alone on selective listening, free of linguistic confounds. We presented listeners with competing auditory streams whose amplitude varied independently and a visual stimulus with varying radius, while manipulating the cross-modal temporal relationships. Performance improved when the auditory target's timecourse matched that of the visual stimulus. The fact that the coherence was between task-irrelevant stimulus features suggests that the observed improvement stemmed from the integration of auditory and visual streams into cross-modal objects, enabling listeners to better attend the target. These findings suggest that in everyday conditions, where listeners can often see the source of a sound, temporal cues provided by vision can help listeners to select one sound source from a mixture.

A Unique Asymmetrical Stroop Effect in Absolute Pitch Possessors

2012 ◽  
Vol 59 (5) ◽  
pp. 272-278 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lilach Akiva-Kabiri ◽  
Avishai Henik
Keyword(s):  
Selective Attention ◽  
Stroop Task ◽  
Stroop Effect ◽  
Congruency Effect ◽  
Absolute Pitch ◽  
Naming Task ◽  
Color Naming ◽  
Reading Task ◽  
Pitch Processing ◽  
Reverse Pattern

The Stroop task has been employed to study automaticity or failures of selective attention for many years. The effect is known to be asymmetrical, with words affecting color naming but not vice versa. In the current work two auditory-visual Stroop-like tasks were devised in order to study the automaticity of pitch processing in both absolute pitch (AP) possessors and musically trained controls without AP (nAP). In the tone naming task, participants were asked to name the auditory tone while ignoring a visual note name. In the note naming task, participants were asked to read a note name while ignoring the auditory tone. The nAP group showed a significant congruency effect only in the tone naming task, whereas AP possessors showed the reverse pattern, with a significant congruency effect only in the note reading task. Thus, AP possessors were unable to ignore the auditory tone when asked to read the note, but were unaffected by the verbal note name when asked to label the auditory tone. The results suggest that pitch identification in participants endowed with AP ability is automatic and impossible to suppress.

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