Field Of Attention Research Articles

Kirchengemeindeforschung – Congregational Studies

Research about German Parishes – International Congregational Studies: Results and Challenges in a RecentlyDiscovered Field ofAttention by the Sociology of Religion and Practical Theology. The article reports about an international conference in Frankfurt (Germany) with presentations by Nancy Ammerman, Marc Chaves (both USA), Jorg Stolz (Switzerland), Henk de Roest (Netherlands) and Aiming Wang (China). The important contributions by quantitative empirical comparative congregational studies and by qualitative empirical case studies are highlighted. A global study is to be desired. The path of a first study by the „Sozialwissenschaftliches Institut der EKD“ on the perception of elders in the parishes of this nationwide Protestant church in Germany is to be further pursued. The importance of case studies should be realised as a field of research and also a tool of church development. The older literature relevant to this field of research, which was often published in somewhat hidden publications, also need...

The attentional field revealed by single-voxel modeling of fMRI time courses.

The spatial topography of visual attention is a distinguishing and critical feature of many theoretical models of visuospatial attention. Previous fMRI-based measurements of the topography of attention have typically been too crude to adequately test the predictions of different competing models. This study demonstrates a new technique to make detailed measurements of the topography of visuospatial attention from single-voxel, fMRI time courses. Briefly, this technique involves first estimating a voxel's population receptive field (pRF) and then "drifting" attention through the pRF such that the modulation of the voxel's fMRI time course reflects the spatial topography of attention. The topography of the attentional field (AF) is then estimated using a time-course modeling procedure. Notably, we are able to make these measurements in many visual areas including smaller, higher order areas, thus enabling a more comprehensive comparison of attentional mechanisms throughout the full hierarchy of human visual cortex. Using this technique, we show that the AF scales with eccentricity and varies across visual areas. We also show that voxels in multiple visual areas exhibit suppressive attentional effects that are well modeled by an AF having an enhancing Gaussian center with a suppressive surround. These findings provide extensive, quantitative neurophysiological data for use in modeling the psychological effects of visuospatial attention.

Psychiatric symptoms, atypical dementia, and left visual field inattention in corticobasal ganglionic degeneration

We longitudinally examined the neuropsychological and psychiatric characteristics of an adult male with pathologically confirmed corticobasal ganglionic degeneration (CBGD). The patient was seen on an inpatient and outpatient basis by members of the Departments of Neurology and Radiology of the University of Miami School of Medicine. Longitudinal neuropsychological testing revealed a lateralized cortical-subcortical dementia and left visual field inattention consistent with neurological and postmortem neuropathological findings of greater right hemisphere dysfunction. Symptoms of depression and obsessive-compulsive symptomatology were also documented. Our findings are consistent with prior reports indicating that CBGD is characterized by lateralized cerebral dysfunction and suggest that a detailed neuropsychological examination is a useful procedure to assist in the differential diagnosis of this movement disorder.