Electrophysiological correlates of feature analysis during visual search

Abstract

Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded from normal young adults during visual search tasks in which the stimulus arrays contained either eight identical items (homogeneous arrays) or seven identical items and one deviant item (pop-out arrays). Four experiments were conducted in which different classes of stimulus arrays were designated targets and the remaining stimulus arrays were designated nontargets. In Experiments 1 and 2, both target and nontarget pop-out stimuli elicited an enhanced anterior N2 wave and a contralaterally larger posterior P1 wave, but Experiments 3 and 4 demonstrated that these components do not reflect fully automatic pop-out detection processes. In all four experiments, target pop-outs elicited enlarged anterior P2, posterior N2, occipital P3, and parietal P3 waves. The target-elicited posterior N2 wave contained a contralateral subcomponent (N2pc) that exhibited a focus over occipital cortex in maps of current source density. The overall pattern of results was consistent with guided search models in which preattentive stimulus information is used to guide attention to task-relevant stimuli.

Attractiveness and affordance shape tools neural coding: Insight from ERPs

“…The visual N100, that may peak earlier over frontal than posterior regions of the scalp (Ciesielski andFrench, 1989, Mangun andHillyard, 1991;Carretie et al, 2003), indexes an important sensory gating mechanism of attention (Foxe and Simpson, 2002;Luck and Hillyard, 1994), associated with task relevance (Ito and Urland, 2005), that only occurs when an intentional discrimination is required Rugg et al, 1987;Vogel and Luck, 2000). It has been hypothesized that focusing attention on the visual stimuli increases the N100 amplitude and facilitates further perceptual processing of relevant perceptual features (Bigman and Pratt, 2004;Luck et al, 2000;Rugg et al, 1987).…”

“…It is likely that high affording/high attractive tools evaluation might exert additive effects on the neural activity. Hence, we hypothesized that high affording/ high attractive tools might elicit an amplitude enhancement of the P200, indexing the access to the object representation system (Amsel et al, in press;Luck and Hillyard, 1994;Phillips and Takeda, 2009;Schendan and Lucia, 2010) and of the fronto-central N300, indexing conceptual processing (Schendan and Kutas, 2007), motor representations processing (Proverbio et al, 2011;Petit et al, 2006) and esthetic appreciation process (Jacobsen and Höfel, 2003). Moreover, the evaluation of high affording/high attractive tools may enhance the P300 component that represents an attentional updating process (Polich, 2007) and has been shown to be sensitive to positive arousing stimuli (DelPlanque et al, 2004(DelPlanque et al, , 2006De Tommaso et al, 2008).…”

Meaning and modality: Influences of context, semantic memory organization, and perceptual predictability on picture processing.

“…Enhanced N 1 amplitudes are observed, for example, in response to target stimuli presented at attended relative to unattended locations. P2 amplitudes have been linked to processes of visual feature (color, orientation, size) detection; increased amplitudes have been observed in response to stimuli containing target features (e.g., Hillyard & Muente, 1984;Luck & Hillyard, 1994). Effects on early components in semantic tasks have been reported before- Boddy and Weinberg (1981), for example, observed P2 enhancements associated with the detection of semantic features-though have sometimes proven difficult to replicate.…”

A brief introduction to the use of event-related potentials in studies of perception and attention

“…This initial deflection is followed by the P1 and N1 components as information propagates through the visual system and perceptual analysis is performed (Heinze et al, 1994; Heinze, Mangun, & Hillyard, 1990; Luck, 1995; Vogel & Luck, 2000). 2 Next, we can observe waveforms elicited by the deployment of covert attention to peripheral targets in the visual field (e.g., the N2pc, Eimer, 1996; Luck & Hillyard, 1994a, 1994b) and components associated with categorization of the visual stimulus (e.g., the N2/P3 complex, Kutas, McCarthy, & Donchin, 1977; Pritchard, Shappell, & Brandt, 1991; Sutton, 1979; Sutton et al, 1965). Waveforms indexing working memory encoding and maintenance are the next to come online (i.e., the P3 and contralateral-delay activity, Donchin, 1981; Vogel & Machizawa, 2004), followed by components elicited during the selection and preparation of the motor response (i.e., the lateralized-readiness potential or LRP, Coles, 1989).…”