Abstract
The present study explores the neural correlates of voluntary modulations of attention in an auditory-visual matching task. Visual stimuli (a female or a male face) were preceded in close temporal proximity by auditory stimuli consisting of the Spanish word for "man" and "woman" ("hombre" or "mujer"). In 80% of the trials the gender of the two stimuli coincided. Participants were asked to mentally count the specific instances in which a female face appeared after hearing the word "man" (10 % of the trials). Our results show attention-related amplitude modulation of the early visual ERP components NI and anterior P2, but also amplitude modulations of (i) the N270 potential usually associated with conflict detection, (ii) a P300 wave related to infrequency, and (iii) an N400 potential related to semantic incongruence. The elicitation of these latter components varied according to task manipulations, evidencing the role of voluntary allocation of attention in fine-tuning cognitive processing, which includes basic processes like detection of infrequency or semantic incongruity often considered to be volition-independent.
Highlights
Selective attention is known to exert a topdown modulation of cognitive mechanisms at different levels
Our results show attentionrelated amplitude modulation of the early visual Event Related Potentials (ERP) components N1 and anterior P2, and amplitude modulations of (i) the N270 potential usually associated with conflict detection, (ii) a P300 wave related to infrequency, and (iii) an N400 potential related to semantic incongruence
The ERPs recorded in the present experiment showed a series of negative and positive deflections that according to their peak latency, polarity, scalp topography and resemblance to classical effects reported in the literature were named as N1, P2, N270, P300 and N400 (Fig. 2)
Summary
Selective attention is known to exert a topdown modulation of cognitive mechanisms at different levels. The system described as the voluntary network of attention constitutes one of the main mechanisms for redistributing attentional resources according to a macrocontext or an experimental setting, for example determining the relevance of a specific stimulation condition in a task-solving oriented strategy (Kok, 2001; Corbetta and Shulman, 2002). In this context, voluntary attention has been shown to modify the timing and allocation of resources related to processes usually considered to be automatic (Yantis and Jonides, 1990).
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