In the present study, we used event-related potentials (ERPs) and behavioral measurements in a peripherally cued line-orientation discrimination task to investigate the underlying mechanisms of orienting and focusing in voluntary and involuntary attention conditions. Informative peripheral cue (75% valid) with long stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) was used in the voluntary attention condition; uninformative peripheral cue (50% valid) with short SOA was used in the involuntary attention condition. Both orienting and focusing were affected by attention type. Results for attention orienting in the voluntary attention condition confirmed the “sensory gain control theory,” as attention enhanced the amplitude of the early ERP components, P1 and N1, without latency changes. In the involuntary attention condition, compared with invalid trials, targets in the valid trials elicited larger and later contralateral P1 components, and smaller and later contralateral N1 components. Furthermore, but only in the voluntary attention condition, targets in the valid trials elicited larger N2 and P3 components than in the invalid trials. Attention focusing in the involuntary attention condition resulted in larger P1 components elicited by targets in small-cue trials compared to large-cue trials, whereas in the voluntary attention condition, larger P1 components were elicited by targets in large-cue trials than in small-cue trials. There was no interaction between orienting and focusing. These results suggest that orienting and focusing of visual-spatial attention are deployed independently regardless of attention type. In addition, the present results provide evidence of dissociation between voluntary and involuntary attention during the same task.
Gain control by layer six in cortical circuits of vision
