The Predictive Brain State: Asynchrony in Disorders of Attention?

Abstract

It is postulated that a key function of attention in goal-oriented behavior is to reduce performance variability by generating anticipatory neural activity that can be synchronized with expected sensory information. A network encompassing the prefrontal cortex, parietal lobe, and cerebellum may be critical in the maintenance and timing of such predictive neural activity. Dysfunction of this temporal process may constitute a fundamental defect in attention, causing working memory problems, distractibility, and decreased awareness.

Abnormal White Matter Blood-Oxygen-Level–Dependent Signals in Chronic Mild Traumatic Brain Injury

“…21,22 The distracter task induced a reduction of variability prior to distracter onset, which we interpret as an increase in top-down control to limit interference from distracting information, as well as reduced accuracy of tracking following the onset of the distracter.…”

“…To summarize this first set of results, there were only nonsignificant increases in variability in mTBI patients, against the hypothesis of impaired anticipation of sensory stimuli 21 at the chronic stage of injury.…”

“…19,20 Fluctuations in attention may increase performance variability, possibly due to deficits of anticipatory (topdown) prediction 21 or an imbalance between goal-driven (topdown) and stimulus-driven (bottom up) attention. 22 Here, we utilized a battery of neurocognitive and visual tracking tasks to examine anticipatory and/or goal-versus stimulus-driven attention deficits in chronic mTBI individuals with persistent postconcussive symptoms.…”

Functional Topography of the Human Cerebellum Revealed by Functional Neuroimaging Studies

“…Because of the largely uniform neural circuitry of the cerebellar cortex, it has been proposed that there is a Universal Cerebellar Transform (Schmahmann 2000(Schmahmann , 2004, whereby a similar computation is performed throughout the cerebellar cortex, but on different information depending on the inputs to and outputs from that particular region. While many potential computations have been proposed, including the development and implementation of internal models (e.g., Ito 2006Ito , 2008Imamizu and Kawato 2009 likewise suggest that internal models can be applied to both sensorimotor functions and higher-order cognitive functions), the monitoring of expected and observed outcomes (e.g., Ben-Yehudah et al 2007), and a role in temporal order and timing (e.g., Ivry 2000; Ivry et al 2002;Ghajar and Ivry 2009), there is of yet no consensus. Further studies are needed to clarify the functional topography of the cerebellum in the context of cerebro-cerebellar and spinocerebellar circuitry, and the role of the cerebellum in tasks ranging from the control of movement, to a wide variety of cognitive domains, and the modulation of emotion.…”

Adaptation, Expertise, and Giftedness: Towards an Understanding of Cortical, Subcortical, and Cerebellar Network Contributions

“…Not surprisingly, as this broad spectrum of connections has been discovered, so has the understanding of the range of functions in which the cerebellum participates been expanded. In addition to its traditionally assigned roles in motor coordination, balance, and motor aspects of speech, activation has consistently been found related to cognitive and affective regulation, language, and spatial cognition [195,[199][200][201], and on tasks assessing attention and executive control functions, particularly working memory [202][203][204][205][206][207]. In fact, it can be difficult to find a task that does not recruit cerebellar activation.…”