The Role of Alpha-Band Brain Oscillations as a Sensory Suppression Mechanism during Selective Attention

Foxe, John J.; Snyder, Ann C.

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00154

Cited by 1,073 publications

(1,082 citation statements)

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“…This result provides insight into one way in which the alpha rhythm, ubiquitous in visual circuits during all phases of wakefulness, may serve as a substrate for the implementation of top-down control of visual processing. Another example of task-related control of alpha phase has recently been described in a working memory experiment, in which alpha-phase clustering was greater before the anticipated onset of strong, relative to weak, distracting stimuli (30). These two demonstrations of the control of alpha phase add to a large extant body of literature demonstrating that alpha power is also modulated by top-down influences during a wide variety of attentional tasks (reviewed in 31).…”

Section: Posterior Alpha-band Oscillations As a Substrate For The Topmentioning

confidence: 85%

Top-down control of the phase of alpha-band oscillations as a mechanism for temporal prediction

Samaha

Bauer

Cimaroli

et al. 2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

229

179

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The physiological state of the brain before an incoming stimulus has substantial consequences for subsequent behavior and neural processing. For example, the phase of ongoing posterior alpha-band oscillations (8–14 Hz) immediately before visual stimulation has been shown to predict perceptual outcomes and downstream neural activity. Although this phenomenon suggests that these oscillations may phasically route information through functional networks, many accounts treat these periodic effects as a consequence of ongoing activity that is independent of behavioral strategy. Here, we investigated whether alpha-band phase can be guided by top-down control in a temporal cueing task. When participants were provided with cues predictive of the moment of visual target onset, discrimination accuracy improved and targets were more frequently reported as consciously seen, relative to unpredictive cues. This effect was accompanied by a significant shift in the phase of alpha-band oscillations, before target onset, toward each participant’s optimal phase for stimulus discrimination. These findings provide direct evidence that forming predictions about when a stimulus will appear can bias the phase of ongoing alpha-band oscillations toward an optimal phase for visual processing, and may thus serve as a mechanism for the top-down control of visual processing guided by temporal predictions.

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Section: Posterior Alpha-band Oscillations As a Substrate For The Topmentioning

confidence: 85%

Top-down control of the phase of alpha-band oscillations as a mechanism for temporal prediction

Samaha

Bauer

Cimaroli

et al. 2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

229

179

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…One possibility is that proactive control is location-based: when distractors are frequent, participants may alter attentional settings to enhance visual processing at target locations and inhibit processing at distractor locations (Foxe & Snyder, 2011;Geng, 2014).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The combined condition in Experiment 2 provides some clues. Here we tested whether effective control of distractors in the high frequency condition was based on inhibition of potential distractor locations (Foxe & Snyder, 2011;Geng, 2014). If so, both scrambled and intact images should have been effectively controlled in the combined condition.…”

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confidence: 99%

Contrasting reactive and proactive control of emotional distraction.

Grimshaw¹,

Kranz²,

Carmel³

et al. 2018

Emotion

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Attending to emotional stimuli is often beneficial, because they provide important social and environmental cues. Sometimes, however, current goals require that we ignore them.To what extent can we control emotional distraction? Here we show that the ability to ignore emotional distractions depends on the type of cognitive control that is engaged.Participants completed a simple perceptual task at fixation while irrelevant images appeared peripherally. In two experiments, we manipulated the proportion of trials in which images appeared, in order to encourage use of either reactive control (rare distractors) or proactive control (frequent distractors). Under reactive control, both negative and positive images were more distracting than neutral images, even though they were irrelevant and appeared in unattended locations. However, under proactive control, distraction by both emotional and neutral images was eliminated. Contrasting Reactive and Proactive Control of Emotional DistractionEmotional stimuli are important. They signal potential threats and rewards and so guide adaptive behaviour. Perceptual and attentional systems prioritize them, as demonstrated through behavioural, electrophysiological and neuroimaging research (for reviews see Carretié, 2014;Okon-Singer, Lichtenstein-Vidne, & Cohen, 2013;Pourtois, Schettino, & Vuilleumier, 2013;Yiend, 2010). But sometimes we need to ignore an emotional stimulus so we can get on with the task at hand. We might need to block out a scowling face to maintain our goal of giving a good talk, or ignore an attractive classmate to concentrate on a lecture. Emotional distractions plague us all, and in disorders such as depression, anxiety, and addiction, they can be overwhelming (Cisler & Koster, 2010;De Raedt & Koster, 2010;Field & Cox, 2008). Non-emotional distractors are known to disrupt performance (Forster & Lavie, 2008a,2008b, but they can also be controlled if we know to expect them (Braver, 2012;Müller, Geyer, Zehetleitner & Krummenacher, 2009) Can we ever control emotional distractions as effectively as those that are more mundane? Cognitive Control of Non-emotional DistractionIn non-emotional contexts, entirely irrelevant stimuli can disrupt performance (Forster & Lavie, 2008a, 2008b. For example, Forster and Lavie (2008a) describe an irrelevant flanker paradigm in which participants complete a letter discrimination task near fixation, while irrelevant images (cartoon characters) appear peripherally. Even when the images are completely task-irrelevant and appear in non-target locations, they can disrupt performance (Forster & Lavie, 2008a as long as the participant's task is perceptually simple (i.e., low load; Forster & Lavie, 2008b). Even under low load, distraction is not obligatory, though; distractors are also less disruptive when they appear more frequently. In 4 Forster and Lavie's (2008a) experiment, images were significantly less distracting when they appeared on 50% compared to 10% of trials. Even more striking distractor frequency effects can be se...

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“…Instead, we focus on a frequency band that has been shown to facilitate spatial attention and enable information transfer between the cerebral hemispheres (43,44): the low-frequency amplitude envelope of α-band activity. The amplitude envelope correlation (AEC) (45) between pairs of MEG sensors can be used to examine whole-brain coordination potentially associated with information transfer.…”

Section: Dynamic Network Constructionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dynamic network structure of interhemispheric coordination

Doron

Bassett

Gazzaniga

2012

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

136

146

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Fifty years ago Gazzaniga and coworkers published a seminal article that discussed the separate roles of the cerebral hemispheres in humans. Today, the study of interhemispheric communication is facilitated by a battery of novel data analysis techniques drawn from across disciplinary boundaries, including dynamic systems theory and network theory. These techniques enable the characterization of dynamic changes in the brain's functional connectivity, thereby providing an unprecedented means of decoding interhemispheric communication. Here, we illustrate the use of these techniques to examine interhemispheric coordination in healthy human participants performing a split visual field experiment in which they process lexical stimuli. We find that interhemispheric coordination is greater when lexical information is introduced to the right hemisphere and must subsequently be transferred to the left hemisphere for language processing than when it is directly introduced to the language-dominant (left) hemisphere. Further, we find that putative functional modules defined by coherent interhemispheric coordination come online in a transient manner, highlighting the underlying dynamic nature of brain communication. Our work illustrates that recently developed dynamic, network-based analysis techniques can provide novel and previously unapproachable insights into the role of interhemispheric coordination in cognition.T he field of split-brain research began several decades ago with the use of a drastic surgical solution for intractable epilepsy (1-3): the severing of the corpus callosum. This procedure significantly decreased the connectivity between the hemispheres, thereby irrevocably altering interhemispheric communication. Although a few interhemispheric pathways remained through subcortical structures and the anterior commissure, examination of callosal function using split visual field experiments clearly demonstrated its role in interhemispheric communication (2). The callosal projection plays a particularly crucial role in a variety of sensory-motor integrative functions of the two hemispheres (4), shows changes with age, and demonstrates the potential for dynamic changes with training (5). In fact, experiments in patients with severance of the callosum revealed that it subserves a large range of behaviors and cognitive functions that underlie the varied workings of the mind.Interhemispheric communication has been studied using two basic approaches. The first uses behavioral experiments to examine cognitive phenotypes, and the second uses neuroscientific experiments to examine brain phenotypes. Split-brain research initially focused on the former: Patients demonstrated striking behavioral phenotypes that provided clues regarding the underlying mechanics of brain communication. For example, although most perceptual processing appears to be isolated in each hemisphere following surgery, some attentional and emotional mechanisms initiated in one hemisphere can still be communicated to the other, cortically disconnected,...

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The Role of Alpha-Band Brain Oscillations as a Sensory Suppression Mechanism during Selective Attention

Cited by 1,073 publications

References 110 publications

Top-down control of the phase of alpha-band oscillations as a mechanism for temporal prediction

Top-down control of the phase of alpha-band oscillations as a mechanism for temporal prediction

Contrasting reactive and proactive control of emotional distraction.

Dynamic network structure of interhemispheric coordination

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