Visual and oculomotor selection: links, causes and implications for spatial attention

Awh, Edward; Armstrong, Katherine M.; Moore, Tirin

doi:10.1016/j.tics.2006.01.001

Cited by 304 publications

(222 citation statements)

References 53 publications

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“…Although in this study we used a covert visual attention paradigm in which relevant stimuli are attended in the absence of overt orienting eye movements, which bring targets of interests to the fovea Awh et al, 2006), there is indirect evidence suggesting that neural mechanisms of saccadic programming and covert visual attention overlap (Rizzolatti et al, 1987;Corbetta et al, 1998;Nobre et al, 2000). In accordance with this model, our data suggest an anatomical and behavioral link between oculomotor vermal structures and impaired covert visual attention-like that suggested by Townsend et al (1999) 10 years earlier.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 76%

Anatomical Correlate of Impaired Covert Visual Attentional Processes in Patients with Cerebellar Lesions

Baier¹,

Dieterich²,

Stoeter³

et al. 2010

J. Neurosci.

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In the past years, claims of cognitive and attentional function of the cerebellum have first been raised but were later refuted. One reason for this controversy might be that attentional deficits only occur when specific cerebellar structures are affected. To further elucidate this matter and to determine which cerebellar regions might be involved in deficits of covert visual attention, we used new brain imaging tools of lesion mapping that allow a direct comparison with control patients. A total of 26 patients with unilateral right-sided cerebellar infarcts were tested on a covert visual attention task. Eight (31%) patients showed markedly slowed responses, especially in trials in which an invalid cue necessitated reorienting of the focus of attention for target detection. Compared with the 18 patients who performed within the range of healthy control subjects, only the impaired patients had lesions of cerebellar vermal structures such as the pyramid. We suggest that these midcerebellar regions are indirectly involved in covert visual attention via oculomotor control mechanisms. Thus, specific cerebellar structures do influence attentional orienting, whereas others do not.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 76%

Anatomical Correlate of Impaired Covert Visual Attentional Processes in Patients with Cerebellar Lesions

Baier¹,

Dieterich²,

Stoeter³

et al. 2010

J. Neurosci.

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show abstract

“…This indicates that a portion of the ISC measure is driven by similarity in retinal input, although this was clearly not enough to account for the full attentional effect on neural reliability. At the same time, the reduction in neural reliability with constrained viewing is consistent with the known link between the attention system in the brain and the eye movement systems, which have been the subject of a long line of work in psychophysics (Kowler, 2011), animal electrophysiology (Awh et al, 2006), and human neuroimaging (Nobre et al, 2000). The present finding builds on this body of work by showing that the relationship exists not only for individual eye movements and discrete spatial fixation points, but is also an important determinant of whether a continuous sensory stream is attended to.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 61%

Attention Strongly Modulates Reliability of Neural Responses to Naturalistic Narrative Stimuli

2016

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Attentional engagement is a major determinant of how effectively we gather information through our senses. Alongside the sheer growth in the amount and variety of information content that we are presented with through modern media, there is increased variability in the degree to which we "absorb" that information. Traditional research on attention has illuminated the basic principles of sensory selection to isolated features or locations, but it provides little insight into the neural underpinnings of our attentional engagement with modern naturalistic content. Here, we show in human subjects that the reliability of an individual's neural responses with respect to a larger group provides a highly robust index of the level of attentional engagement with a naturalistic narrative stimulus. Specifically, fast electroencephalographic evoked responses were more strongly correlated across subjects when naturally attending to auditory or audiovisual narratives than when attention was directed inward to a mental arithmetic task during stimulus presentation. This effect was strongest for audiovisual stimuli with a cohesive narrative and greatly reduced for speech stimuli lacking meaning. For compelling audiovisual narratives, the effect is remarkably strong, allowing perfect discrimination between attentional state across individuals. Control experiments rule out possible confounds related to altered eye movement trajectories or order of presentation. We conclude that reliability of evoked activity reproduced across subjects viewing the same movie is highly sensitive to the attentional state of the viewer and listener, which is aided by a cohesive narrative.

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“…First, examination of eye movements in this task (even though rare and produced well after the display had disappeared) showed that overt orienting was more likely to be directed toward the left, not the right, predicting slowing for RVF, not LVF, targets. Spatial shifts in attention typically accompany or precede oculomotor shifts and have the effect of speeding responding (Awh, Armstrong, & Moore, 2006). Second, if spatial attention had been shifted to one hemifield or the other by the presentation of an emotional prime, opposite effects on RT in the other hemifield should have been observed.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Emotional distraction unbalances visual processing

Gupta

Raymond

2012

Psychon Bull Rev

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Brain mechanisms used to control nonemotional aspects of cognition may be distinct from those regulating responses to emotional stimuli, with activity of the latter being detrimental to the former. Previous studies have shown that suppression of irrelevant emotional stimuli produces a largely right-lateralized pattern of frontal brain activation, thus predicting that emotional stimuli may invoke temporary, lateralized costs to performance on nonemotional cognitive tasks. To test this, we briefly (85 ms) presented a central, irrelevant, expressive (angry, happy, sad, or fearful) or neutral face 100 ms prior to a letter search task. The presentation of emotional versus neutral faces slowed subsequent search for targets appearing in the left, but not the right, hemifield, supporting the notion of a right-lateralized, emotional response mechanism that competes for control with nonemotional cognitive processes. Presentation of neutral, scrambled, or inverted neutral faces produced no such laterality effects on visual search response times.

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Visual and oculomotor selection: links, causes and implications for spatial attention

Cited by 304 publications

References 53 publications

Anatomical Correlate of Impaired Covert Visual Attentional Processes in Patients with Cerebellar Lesions

Anatomical Correlate of Impaired Covert Visual Attentional Processes in Patients with Cerebellar Lesions

Attention Strongly Modulates Reliability of Neural Responses to Naturalistic Narrative Stimuli

Emotional distraction unbalances visual processing

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