Attentional Control Processes Research Articles

All set, indeed! N2pc components reveal simultaneous attentional control settings for multiple target colors.

To study whether top-down attentional control processes can be set simultaneously for different visual features, we employed a spatial cueing procedure to measure behavioral and electrophysiological markers of task-set contingent attentional capture during search for targets defined by 1 or 2 possible colors (one-color and two-color tasks). Search arrays were preceded by spatially nonpredictive color singleton cues. Behavioral spatial cueing effects indicative of attentional capture were elicited only by target-matching but not by distractor-color cues. However, when search displays contained 1 target-color and 1 distractor-color object among gray nontargets, N2pc components were triggered not only by target-color but also by distractor-color cues both in the one-color and two-color task, demonstrating that task-set nonmatching items attracted attention. When search displays contained 6 items in 6 different colors, so that participants had to adopt a fully feature-specific task set, the N2pc to distractor-color cues was eliminated in both tasks, indicating that nonmatching items were now successfully excluded from attentional processing. These results demonstrate that when observers adopt a feature-specific search mode, attentional task sets can be configured flexibly for multiple features within the same dimension, resulting in the rapid allocation of attention to task-set matching objects only. (PsycINFO Database Record

Mindful Aging: The Effects of Regular Brief Mindfulness Practice on Electrophysiological Markers of Cognitive and Affective Processing in Older Adults

There is growing interest in the potential benefits of mindfulness meditation practices in terms of counteracting some of the cognitive effects associated with aging. Pursuing this question, the aim of the present study was to investigate the influence of mindfulness training on executive control and emotion regulation in older adults, by means of studying behavioral and electrophysiological changes. Participants, 55 to 75 years of age, were randomly allocated to an 8-week mindful breath awareness training group or an active control group engaging in brain training exercises. Before and after the training period, participants completed an emotional-counting Stroop task, designed to measure attentional control and emotion regulation processes. Concurrently, their brain activity was measured by means of 64-channel electroencephalography. The results show that engaging in just over 10 min of mindfulness practice five times per week resulted in significant improvements in behavioral (response latency) and electrophysiological (N2 event-related potential) measures related to general task performance. Analyses of the underlying cortical sources (Variable Resolution Electromagnetic Tomography, VARETA) indicate that this N2-related effect is primarily associated with changes in the right angular gyrus and other areas of the dorsal attention network. However, the study did not find the expected specific improvements in executive control and emotion regulation, which may be due to the training instructions or the relative brevity of the intervention. Overall, the results indicate that engaging in mindfulness meditation training improves the maintenance of goal-directed visuospatial attention and may be a useful strategy for counteracting cognitive decline associated with aging.

Effects of bandwidth feedback on the automatization of an arm movement sequence

We examined the effects of a bandwidth feedback manipulation on motor learning. Effects on movement accuracy, as well as on movement consistency, have been addressed in earlier studies. We have additionally investigated the effects on motor automatization. Because providing error feedback is believed to induce attentional control processes, we suppose that a bandwidth method should facilitate motor automatization. Participants (N=48) were assigned to four groups: one control group and three intervention groups. Participants of the intervention groups practiced an arm movement sequence with 760 trials. The BW0-Group practiced with 100% frequency of feedback. For the BW10-Group, feedback was provided when the errors were larger than 10°. The YokedBW10-Group participants were matched to the feedback schedule of research twins from the BW10-Group. All groups performed pre-tests and retention tests with a secondary task paradigm to test for automaticity. The BW10-Group indicated a higher degree of automatization compared with the BW0-Group, which did not exhibit a change in automaticity. The comparison of the YokedBW10-Group, which also exhibited automatization, and the BW10-Group leads to the proposal that reduction of quantitative feedback frequency and additional positive feedback are responsible for the bandwidth effect. Differences in movement accuracy and consistency were not evident.

S.02.03 Combinatorial pharmacogenomics provides clinical validity and utility for treating major depression

There is a need to improve current treatments for anxiety through developing valid experimental human models of anxiety that allow us to more effectively evaluate novel pharmacological and psychological treatments (and mechanisms of action) in healthy volunteers, prior to evaluation in patient populations. Inhalation of air ‘enriched’ with 7.5% carbon dioxide (CO2) increases selfreport anxiety (worry, tension) and autonomic arousal (heart rate, blood pressure) and provides a novel experimental model of anxiety in healthy humans. Recent evidence from quantitative and qualitative methods suggests that 7.5% CO2 challenge can reliably model core symptoms of anxiety in healthy individuals, including dysfunction in neuropsychological mechanisms that characterise trait anxiety e.g. uncontrollable worry, poor attention control, hyper-vigilance and selective processing of environmental threat. Importantly, the comparable effects of CO2 challenge (in low anxious individuals) and trait anxiety on cognition and emotion processing appear to be independent of elevated state anxiety. Consequently CO2 inhalation may directly challenge neuropsychological mechanisms that characterise generalized trait anxiety rather than transient state anxiety. The model converges with other experimental human anxiety paradigms (e.g. social stress tests and worry induction), but importantly can readily translate into animal paradigms to identify cross-species neural mechanisms that mediate anxious responding. I will summarise evidence from on-going work that is using the CO2 model to evaluate a range of treatment interventions and modalities for anxiety. These include established and potential anxiolytic pharmacological drug treatments, psychological interventions (e.g. cognitive-behavioural attention training), and medical devices that can target prefrontal cortical mechanisms (e.g. trans-cranial direct current stimulation).

A critical role of temporoparietal junction in the integration of top‐down and bottom‐up attentional control

Information processing can be biased toward behaviorally relevant and salient stimuli by top-down (goal-directed) and bottom-up (stimulus-driven) attentional control processes respectively. However, the neural basis underlying the integration of these processes is not well understood. We employed functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and transcranial direct-current stimulation (tDCS) in humans to examine the brain mechanisms underlying the interaction between these two processes. We manipulated the cognitive load involved in top-down processing and stimulus surprise involved in bottom-up processing in a factorial design by combining a majority function task and an oddball paradigm. We found that high cognitive load and high surprise level were associated with prolonged reaction time compared to low cognitive load and low surprise level, with a synergistic interaction effect, which was accompanied by a greater deactivation of bilateral temporoparietal junction (TPJ). In addition, the TPJ displayed negative functional connectivity with right middle occipital gyrus, which is involved in bottom-up processing (modulated by the interaction effect), and the right frontal eye field (FEF), which is involved in top-down control. The enhanced negative functional connectivity between the TPJ and right FEF was accompanied by a larger behavioral interaction effect across subjects. Application of cathodal tDCS over the right TPJ eliminated the interaction effect. These results suggest that the TPJ plays a critical role in processing bottom-up information for top-down control of attention.

Adults with high social anhedonia have altered neural connectivity with ventral lateral prefrontal cortex when processing positive social signals.

Social anhedonia (SA) is a debilitating characteristic of schizophrenia, a common feature in individuals at psychosis-risk, and a vulnerability for developing schizophrenia-spectrum disorders. Prior work (Hooker et al., 2014) revealed neural deficits in the ventral lateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) when processing positive social cues in a community sample of people with high SA. Lower VLPFC neural activity was related to more severe self-reported schizophrenia-spectrum symptoms as well as the exacerbation of symptoms after social stress. In the current study, psycho-physiological interaction (PPI) analysis was applied to further investigate the neural mechanisms mediated by the VLPFC during emotion processing. PPI analysis revealed that, compared to low SA controls, participants with high SA exhibited reduced connectivity between the VLPFC and the motor cortex, the inferior parietal and the posterior temporal regions when viewing socially positive (relative to neutral) emotions. Across all participants, VLPFC connectivity correlated with behavioral and self-reported measures of attentional control, emotion management, and reward processing. Our results suggest that impairments to the VLPFC mediated neural circuitry underlie the cognitive and emotional deficits associated with social anhedonia, and may serve as neural targets for prevention and treatment of schizophrenia-spectrum disorders.

Proactive control of irrelevant task rules during cued task switching.

In task-switching paradigms, participants are often slower on incongruent than congruent trials, a pattern known as the task-rule congruency effect. This effect suggests that irrelevant task rules or associated responses may be retrieved automatically in spite of task cues. The purpose of the present study was to examine whether the task-rule congruency effect may be modulated via manipulations intended to induce variation in proactive control. Manipulating the proportion of congruent to incongruent trials strongly influenced the magnitude of the task-rule congruency effect. The effect was significantly reduced in a mostly incongruent list relative to a mostly congruent list, a pattern that was observed for not only biased but also 50% congruent items. This finding implicates a role for global attentional control processes in the task-rule congruency effect. In contrast, enhancing the preparation of relevant (cued) task rules by the provision of a monetary incentive substantially reduced mixing costs but did not affect the task-rule congruency effect. These patterns support the view that there may be multiple routes by which proactive control can influence task-switching performance; however, only select routes appear to influence the automatic retrieval of irrelevant task rules.

Dual pathways to prospective remembering.

According to the multiprocess framework (McDaniel and Einstein, 2000), the cognitive system can support prospective memory (PM) retrieval through two general pathways. One pathway depends on top–down attentional control processes that maintain activation of the intention and/or monitor the environment for the triggering or target cues that indicate that the intention should be executed. A second pathway depends on (bottom–up) spontaneous retrieval processes, processes that are often triggered by a PM target cue; critically, spontaneous retrieval is assumed not to require monitoring or active maintenance of the intention. Given demand characteristics associated with experimental settings, however, participants are often inclined to monitor, thereby potentially masking discovery of bottom–up spontaneous retrieval processes. In this article, we discuss parameters of laboratory PM paradigms to discourage monitoring and review recent behavioral evidence from such paradigms that implicate spontaneous retrieval in PM. We then re-examine the neuro-imaging evidence from the lens of the multiprocess framework and suggest some critical modifications to existing neuro-cognitive interpretations of the neuro-imaging results. These modifications illuminate possible directions and refinements for further neuro-imaging investigations of PM.

Aversive emotional interference impacts behavior and prefronto-striatal activity during increasing attentional control.

Earlier studies have demonstrated that emotional stimulation modulates attentional processing during goal-directed behavior and related activity of a brain network including the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and the caudate nucleus. However, it is not clear how emotional interference modulates behavior and brain physiology during variation in attentional control, a relevant question for everyday life situations in which both emotional stimuli and cognitive load vary. The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of negative emotions on behavior and activity in IFG and caudate nucleus during increasing levels of attentional control. Twenty two healthy subjects underwent event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging while performing a task in which neutral or fearful facial expressions were displayed before stimuli eliciting increasing levels of attentional control processing. Results indicated slower reaction time (RT) and greater right IFG activity when fearful compared with neutral facial expressions preceded the low level of attentional control. On the other hand, fearful facial expressions preceding the intermediate level of attentional control elicited faster behavioral responses and greater activity in the right and left sides of the caudate. Finally, correlation analysis indicated a relationship between behavioral correlates of attentional control after emotional interference and right IFG activity. All together, these results suggest that the impact of negative emotions on attentional processing is differentially elicited at the behavioral and physiological levels as a function of cognitive load.

Social anxiety and information processing biases: An integrated theoretical perspective

Models of anxiety disorders posit that information processing biases towards threat may result from an imbalance between top-down attentional control processes and bottom-up attentional processes, such that anxiety could reduce the influence of the former and increase the influence of the latter. However, researchers have recently pointed to limitations of the top-down/bottom-up terminology and outlined the additional contribution of memory processes to attention guidance. The goal of this paper is to provide bridges between recent findings from cognitive psychology and anxiety disorders research. We first provide an integrative overview of the processes influencing the content of working memory, including the availability of attentional control, and the strengths of task goals, stimulus salience, selection history and long-term memory. We then illustrate the interest of this formulation to the study of information processing biases in anxiety disorders, with a specific focus on social anxiety.

The neural correlates of emotion regulation by implementation intentions.

Several studies have investigated the neural basis of effortful emotion regulation (ER) but the neural basis of automatic ER has been less comprehensively explored. The present study investigated the neural basis of automatic ER supported by ‘implementation intentions’. 40 healthy participants underwent fMRI while viewing emotion-eliciting images and used either a previously-taught effortful ER strategy, in the form of a goal intention (e.g., try to take a detached perspective), or a more automatic ER strategy, in the form of an implementation intention (e.g., “If I see something disgusting, then I will think these are just pixels on the screen!”), to regulate their emotional response. Whereas goal intention ER strategies were associated with activation of brain areas previously reported to be involved in effortful ER (including dorsolateral prefrontal cortex), ER strategies based on an implementation intention strategy were associated with activation of right inferior frontal gyrus and ventro-parietal cortex, which may reflect the attentional control processes automatically captured by the cue for action contained within the implementation intention. Goal intentions were also associated with less effective modulation of left amygdala, supporting the increased efficacy of ER under implementation intention instructions, which showed coupling of orbitofrontal cortex and amygdala. The findings support previous behavioural studies in suggesting that forming an implementation intention enables people to enact goal-directed responses with less effort and more efficiency.

Top-down control and early multisensory processes: chicken vs. egg.

Traditional views contend that behaviorally-relevant multisensory interactions occur relatively late during stimulus processing and subsequently to influences of (top-down) attentional control. In contrast, work from the last 15 years shows that information from different senses is integrated in the brain also during the initial 100 ms after stimulus onset and within low-level cortices. Critically, many of these early-latency multisensory interactions (hereafter eMSI) directly impact behavior. The prevalence of eMSI substantially advances our understanding of how unified perception and goal-related behavior emerge. However, it also raises important questions about the dependency of the eMSI on top-down, goal-based attentional control mechanisms that bias information processing toward task-relevant objects (hereafter top-down control). To date, this dependency remains controversial, because eMSI can occur independently of top-down control, making it plausible for (some) multisensory processes to directly shape perception and behavior. In other words, the former is not necessary for these early effects to occur and to link them with perception (see Figure ​Figure1A).1A). This issue epitomizes the fundamental question regarding direct links between sensation, perception, and behavior (direct perception), and also extends it in a crucial way to incorporate the multisensory nature of everyday experience. At the same time, the emerging framework must strive to also incorporate the variety of higher-order control mechanisms that likely influence multisensory stimulus responses but which are not based on task-relevance. This article presents a critical perspective about the importance of top-down control for eMSI: In other words, who is controlling whom? Figure 1 (A) Depiction of manners in which top-down attentional control and bottom-up multisensory processes may influence direct perception in multisensory contexts. In this model, the bottom-up multisensory processes that occur early in time (eMSI; beige box) ...

Individual differences in working memory capacity and attentional control.

Visual working memory (WM) has a very limited online capacity making it considerably important to control the gating of encoding into WM. Recent studies have suggested that attention control is of importance in doing so, especially the time needed to disengage. However, the disengagement mechanism operates on a later stage of processing after the initial selection of information has already been initiated. We assume that individual differences in WM capacity are also driven by individual variations in the voluntary engagement of attention. In 2 experiments we investigated whether individuals with high- and low-WM capacity differ in the efficiency and speed of this attention control process. We realised different versions of the task in which different amounts of attention control were necessary, a more automatically triggered allocation of attention and a voluntary initiation of attention engagement, respectively. We further manipulated the time course to look for differences in the latency of attention control. The results revealed that participants with low-WM capacity were less effective to exhibit voluntary attention control processes and they were also slower in doing so compared with high-WM capacity individuals. However, this effect seems to be partly moderated by the ability to update the current task set. If the trial structure did not require task set updating smaller individual differences involving WM capacity could be found.

A dissociation between selective attention and conscious awareness in the representation of temporal order information.

Previous electrophysiological studies have shown that attentional selection processes are highly sensitive to the temporal order of task-relevant visual events. When two successively presented colour-defined target stimuli are separated by a stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) of only 10 ms, the onset latencies of N2pc components to these stimuli (which reflect their attentional selection) precisely match their objective temporal separation. We tested whether such small onset differences are accessible to conscious awareness by instructing participants to report the category (letter or digit) of the first of two target-colour items that were separated by an SOA of 10, 20, or 30 ms. Performance was at chance level for the 10 ms SOA, demonstrating that temporal order information which is available to attentional control processes cannot be utilized for conscious temporal order judgments. These results provide new evidence that selective attention and conscious awareness are functionally separable, and support the hypothesis that attention and awareness operate at different stages of cognitive processing.

An fMRI study of cognitive control in problem gamers

A small proportion of video game players develop uncontrolled gaming behavior. A dysfunctional cognitive control circuit may explain this excessive behavior. Therefore, the current study investigated whether problem gamers are characterized by deficits in various aspects of cognitive control (inhibitory control, error processing, attentional control) by measuring brain activation using functional magnetic resonance imaging during Go–NoGo and Stroop task performance. In addition, both impulsivity and attentional control were measured using self-reports. Participants comprised 18 problem gamers who were compared with 16 matched casual gaming controls. Results indicate significantly increased self-reported impulsivity levels and decreased inhibitory control accompanied by reduced brain activation in the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and right inferior parietal lobe (IPL) in problem gamers relative to controls. Significant hypoactivation in the left IFG in problem gamers was also observed during Stroop task performance, but groups did not differ on behavioral and self-reported measures of attentional control. No evidence was found for reduced error processing in problem gamers. In conclusion, the current study provides evidence for reduced inhibitory control in problem gamers, while attentional control and error processing were mostly intact. These findings implicate that reduced inhibitory control and elevated impulsivity may constitute a neurocognitive weakness in problem gamers.

Función y conducta ejecutiva en universitarios consumidores de alcohol

ObjectivesEstablish the profile of executive function and behavior in fifty consumers of alcohol are located in a high-risk level according to the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) and which belong to different universities in the city of Bogota. Material and methodsWas used analytical transverse design, and were taken as study variables executive function (inhibition, monitoring, sequencing, planning, cognitive flexibility, working memory, attentional control, categorization and concept formation) and executive behavior (decision making, impulse control, emotional feedback, empathy and theory of mind). Results and conclutionsResults showed that there is a greater number of cognitive domains of executive function involved in contrast to those of executive behavior. Such is for inhibition, sequencing, attention control (processing speed), categorization, cognitive flexibility, self monitoring and planning

The anodal tDCS over the left posterior parietal cortex enhances attention toward a focus word in a sentence.

The posterior parietal cortex (PPC) has two attentional functions: top-down attentional control and stimulus-driven attentional processing. Using the focused version of the reading span test (RST), in which the target word to be remembered is the critical word for comprehending a sentence (focused word) or a non-focused word, we examined the effect of tDCS on resolution of distractor interference by the focused word in the non-focus condition (top-down attentional control) and on augmented/shrunk attentional capture by the focused word in both the focus and non-focus conditions (stimulus-driven attentional processing). Participants were divided into two groups: anodal tDCS (atDCS) and cathodal tDCS (ctDCS). Online stimulation was given while participants performed the RST. A post-hoc recognition task was also administered in which three kinds of words were presented: target words in the RST, distractor words in the RST, and novel words. atDCS augmented the effect of the focused word by increasing differences in performance between the focus and non-focus conditions. Such an effect was not observed in the ctDCS group. As for the recognition task, atDCS again produced the augmented effect of the focused words in the distractor recognition. On the other hand, ctDCS brought less recognition of non-focused target words in comparison to sham. The results indicate that atDCS promotes stimulus-driven attentional processing, possibly by affecting neural firing in the inferior parietal regions. In contrast, ctDCS appears to prevent retrieval of less important information from episodic memory, which may require top-down attentional processing.

Uncertainty during pain anticipation: the adaptive value of preparatory processes.

Anticipatory processes prepare the organism for upcoming experiences. The aim of this study was to investigate neural responses related to anticipation and processing of painful stimuli occurring with different levels of uncertainty. Twenty-five participants (13 females) took part in an electroencephalography and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment at separate times. A visual cue announced the occurrence of an electrical painful or nonpainful stimulus, delivered with certainty or uncertainty (50% chance), at some point during the following 15 s. During the first 2 s of the anticipation phase, a strong effect of uncertainty was reflected in a pronounced frontal stimulus-preceding negativity (SPN) and increased fMRI activation in higher visual processing areas. In the last 2 s before stimulus delivery, we observed stimulus-specific preparatory processes indicated by a centroparietal SPN and posterior insula activation that was most pronounced for the certain pain condition. Uncertain anticipation was associated with attentional control processes. During stimulation, the results revealed that unexpected painful stimuli produced the strongest activation in the affective pain processing network and a more pronounced offset-P2. Our results reflect that during early anticipation uncertainty is strongly associated with affective mechanisms and seems to be a more salient event compared to certain anticipation. During the last 2 s before stimulation, attentional control mechanisms are initiated related to the increased salience of uncertainty. Furthermore, stimulus-specific preparatory mechanisms during certain anticipation also shaped the response to stimulation, underlining the adaptive value of stimulus-targeted preparatory activity which is less likely when facing an uncertain event.

Magnetoencephalographic alpha band connectivity reveals differential default mode network interactions during focused attention and open monitoring meditation.

According to several conceptualizations of meditation, the interplay between brain systems associated to self-related processing, attention and executive control is crucial for meditative states and related traits. We used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to investigate such interplay in a highly selected group of “virtuoso” meditators (Theravada Buddhist monks), with long-term training in the two main meditation styles: focused attention (FA) and open monitoring (OM) meditation. Specifically, we investigated the differences between FA meditation, OM meditation and resting state in the coupling between the posterior cingulate cortex, core node of the Default Mode Network (DMN) implicated in mind wandering and self-related processing, and the whole brain, with a recently developed phase coherence approach. Our findings showed a state dependent coupling of posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) to nodes of the DMN and of the executive control brain network in the alpha frequency band (8–12 Hz), related to different attentional and cognitive control processes in FA and OM meditation, consistently with the putative role of alpha band synchronization in the functional mechanisms for attention and consciousness. The coupling of PCC with left medial prefrontal cortex (lmPFC) and superior frontal gyrus characterized the contrast between the two meditation styles in a way that correlated with meditation expertise. These correlations may be related to a higher mindful observing ability and a reduced identification with ongoing mental activity in more expert meditators. Notably, different styles of meditation and different meditation expertise appeared to modulate the dynamic balance between fronto-parietal (FP) and DMN networks. Our results support the idea that the interplay between the DMN and the FP network in the alpha band is crucial for the transition from resting state to different meditative states.

A unified signal of attentional control.

A unified signal of attentional control.