Auditory White Noise Research Articles

Effects of Auditory and Visual White Noise on Oculomotor Inhibition in Children With Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: Protocol for a Crossover Study.

In attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), poor inhibitory control is one of the main characteristics, with oculomotor inhibition impairments being considered a potential biomarker of the disorder. While auditory white noise has demonstrated the ability to enhance working memory in this group, visual white noise is still unexplored and so are the effects of both types of white noise stimulation on oculomotor inhibition. This crossover study aims to explore the impact of auditory and visual white noise on oculomotor inhibition in children with ADHD and typically developing (TD) children. The study will investigate the impact of different noise levels (25% and 50% visual, 78 dB auditory), and performance will be evaluated both with and without noise stimulation. We hypothesize that exposure to white noise will improve performance in children with ADHD and impair the performance for TD children. Memory-guided saccades and prolonged fixations, known for their sensitivity in detecting oculomotor disinhibition in ADHD, will be used to assess performance. Children diagnosed with ADHD, withdrawing from medication for 24 hours, and TD children without psychiatric disorders were recruited for the study. Data collection was initiated in October 2023 and ended in February 2024. A total of 97 participants were enrolled, and the first results are expected between September and November 2024. This study will examine whether cross-modal sensory stimulation can enhance executive function, specifically eye movement control, in children with ADHD. In addition, the study will explore potential differences between auditory and visual noise effects in both groups. Our goal is to identify implications for understanding how noise can be used to improve cognitive performance. ClinicalTrials.gov NCT06057441; https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT06057441. DERR1-10.2196/56388.

Investigating Stochastic Resonance in Tactile Discrimination

Stochastic resonance (SR) is a phenomenon where addition of noise to a system enhances the system’s signal-to-noise ratio. SR can improve the ability to detect weak signals. Lugo et al. showed that tactile detection threshold decreased when participants received auditory white noise. We aimed to replicate the results of Lugo et al., except that we measured tactile discrimination. We examined whether discrimination between durations of vibrotactile stimuli would be better when auditory noise was presented. Participants performed a 2AFC task for three noise conditions: no noise, 45 dB, 55 dB. A total of 17 out of 24 participants demonstrated increased tactile sensitivity when white noise was present compared to when it was absent, which is not statistically significant. The optimal noise level varied among individuals. Eight participants performed best at 45 dB and 4 at 55 dB. Hence, determining the ideal noise level for each person is crucial for enhancing tactile sensitivity.

Effects of auditory white noise stimulation on sustained attention and response time variability.

"The moderate brain arousal model" claims that white noise improves attention by optimizing brain arousal. We analyze Conners' Continuous Performance Test-3 (CCPT-3) performance, expecting to find reduced reaction time variability with noise mediated by decrease under long event-rates and in later parts of the test, indicating that noise reverse fall in phasic and tonic arousal. Sixty-five children with high or lower ADHD-symptoms from a child psychiatric unit, succeeded to complete the CCPT-3 with and without white noise. Noise reduced overall variability, improved performance in later parts of the test, and reduced response variability under the longest event rate particularly in the high symptoms group. No overall change in omissions and commissions, but the high symptoms group made fewer omissions during noise compared the low symptom group. The study indicates an arousal effect of noise but should be replicated with other noise variants and amplitudes to improve effect and compliance.

Effects of stochastic vestibular stimulation on cognitive performance in children with ADHD

Previous work has shown that exposure to auditory white noise (WN) can improve cognitive performance in children with ADHD, but it is unknown whether this improvement generalizes to other sensory modalities. To address this knowledge gap, we tested the effect of Stochastic Vestibular Stimulation (SVS) on cognitive performance and reaction time (RT) variability in two groups: children with ADHD and typically developing children (TDC). Children with ADHD (N=42) and TDC (N=28) performed three cognitive tasks (Spanboard, Word Recall and N-back tasks) at two different occasions, with and without exposure to SVS, in a double blinded design. The results showed no main effects of SVS on neither performance nor RT variability for children in any of the groups, and no interactions between SVS and group. Based on these results we conclude that, using our stimulation protocol, the positive effects of WN exposure on cognition in children with ADHD do not generalize to Stochastic Vestibular Stimulation.

Additive Sensory Noise Effects on Operator Performance in a Lunar Landing Simulation.

INTRODUCTION: Adding noise to a system to improve a weak signal's detectability is known as stochastic resonance (SR). SR has been shown to improve sensory perception and cognitive performance in certain individuals, but it is unknown whether this performance improvement can translate to meaningful macrocognitive enhancements in performance for complex, operational tasks.OBJECTIVE: We investigated human operator performance in a lunar landing simulation while applying auditory white noise and/or noisy galvanic vestibular stimulation.METHODS: We measured performance (N = 16 subjects) while completing simulation trials in our Aerospace Research Simulator. Trials were completed with and without the influence of auditory white noise, noisy galvanic vestibular stimulation, and both simultaneously in a multimodal fashion. Performance was observed holistically and across subdimensions of the task, which included flight skill and perception. Subjective mental workload was collected after completing four trials in each treatment.RESULTS: We did not find broad operator improvement under the influence of noise, but a significant interaction was identified between subject and noise treatment, indicating that some subjects were impacted by additive noise. We also found significant interactions between subject and noise treatment in performance subdimensions of flight skill and perception. We found no significant main effects on mental workload.CONCLUSIONS: This study investigated the utility of using additive sensory noise to induce SR for complex tasks. While SR has been shown to improve aspects of performance, our results suggest additive noise does not yield operational performance changes for a broad population, but specific individuals may be affected.Sherman SO, Shen Y-Y, Gutierrez-Mendoza D, Schlittenhart M, Watson C, Clark TK, Anderson AP. Additive sensory noise effects on operator performance in a lunar landing simulation. Aerosp Med Hum Perform. 2023; 94(10):770-779.

Auditory white noise exposure results in intrinsic cortical excitability changes

Cortical excitability is commonly measured by applying magnetic stimulation in combination with measuring behavioral response. This measure has, however, some shortcomings including spatial limitation to the primary motor cortex and not accounting for intrinsic excitability fluctuations. Here, we use a measure for intrinsic excitability based on phase synchronization previously validated for epilepsy. We apply this measure in 30 healthy participants' magnetoencephalography (MEG) recordings during the exposure of auditory white noise, a stimulus that has been suggested to modify cortical excitability. Using cortical parcellation of the MEG source data, we could find a specific pattern of increased and decreased excitability while participants are exposed to white noise vs. silence. Specifically, excitability during white noise exposure decreases in the frontal lobe and increases in the temporal lobe. This study thus adds to the understanding of cortical excitability changes due to specific environmental stimuli as well as the spatial extent of these effects.

Training augmentation using additive sensory noise in a lunar rover navigation task.

The uncertain environments of future space missions means that astronauts will need to acquire new skills rapidly; thus, a non-invasive method to enhance learning of complex tasks is desirable. Stochastic resonance (SR) is a phenomenon where adding noise improves the throughput of a weak signal. SR has been shown to improve perception and cognitive performance in certain individuals. However, the learning of operational tasks and behavioral health effects of repeated noise exposure aimed to elicit SR are unknown. We evaluated the long-term impacts and acceptability of repeated auditory white noise (AWN) and/or noisy galvanic vestibular stimulation (nGVS) on operational learning and behavioral health. Subjects (n = 24) participated in a time longitudinal experiment to access learning and behavioral health. Subjects were assigned to one of our four treatments: sham, AWN (55 dB SPL), nGVS (0.5 mA), and their combination to create a multi-modal SR (MMSR) condition. To assess the effects of additive noise on learning, these treatments were administered continuously during a lunar rover simulation in virtual reality. To assess behavioral health, subjects completed daily, subjective questionnaires related to their mood, sleep, stress, and their perceived acceptance of noise stimulation. We found that subjects learned the lunar rover task over time, as shown by significantly lower power required for the rover to complete traverses (p < 0.005) and increased object identification accuracy in the environment (p = 0.05), but this was not influenced by additive SR noise (p = 0.58). We found no influence of noise on mood or stress following stimulation (p > 0.09). We found marginally significant longitudinal effects of noise on behavioral health (p = 0.06) as measured by strain and sleep. We found slight differences in stimulation acceptability between treatment groups, and notably nGVS was found to be more distracting than sham (p = 0.006). Our results suggest that repeatedly administering sensory noise does not improve long-term operational learning performance or affect behavioral health. We also find that repetitive noise administration is acceptable in this context. While additive noise does not improve performance in this paradigm, if it were used for other contexts, it appears acceptable without negative longitudinal effects.

Effects of additive sensory noise on cognition.

Adding noise to a system to improve a weak signal's throughput is known as stochastic resonance (SR). SR has been shown to improve sensory perception. Some limited research shows noise can also improve higher order processing, such as working memory, but it is unknown whether SR can broadly improve cognition. We investigated cognitive performance while applying auditory white noise (AWN) and/or noisy galvanic vestibular stimulation (nGVS). We measured cognitive performance (n = 13 subjects) while completing seven tasks in the cognition test battery (CTB). Cognition was assessed with and without the influence of AWN, nGVS, and both simultaneously. Performance in speed, accuracy, and efficiency was observed. A subjective questionnaire regarding preference for working in noisy environments was collected. We did not find broad cognitive performance improvement under the influence of noise (p > 0.1). However, a significant interaction was found between subject and noise condition for accuracy (p = 0.023), indicating that some subjects exhibited cognitive changes with the addition of noise. Across all metrics, noisy environment preference may trend to be a potential indicator of whether subjects will exhibit SR cognitive benefits with a significant predictor in efficiency (p = 0.048). This study investigated using additive sensory noise to induce SR in overall cognition. Our results suggest that using noise to improve cognition is not applicable for a broad population; however, the effect of noise differs across individuals. Further, subjective questionnaires may be a means to identify which individuals are sensitive to SR cognitive benefits, but further investigation is needed.

Effect of auditory noise circumstance on visual images encoding based electroencephalography analysis

ABSTRACT Auditory stimulation may be beneficial or detrimental to human cognitive and memory processing. Numerous studies have been conducted to investigate the influence of various sounds on human performance. The current research discovers the impact of auditory white noise on the memory performance of 60 college students using different difficulty levels in visual object-number pair assessment. Memory perfomance is accessed based on the assessment recall scores and brain activities. An electroencephalography (EEG) device measures and records the brain's electrical activity during the experimental session. Nine EEG channel locations are selected for brain activities analysis. The raw EEG dataset is processed using wavelet methods of stationary wavelet transform (SWT) and discrete wavelet transfrom (DWT) using the Daubechies (db) function to eliminate the artifact components and extract the required EEG features. The result indicated that the college student remembered the object-number pair assessment better under auditory white noise rather than no audio condition. This contributed from the activation of alpha, theta, gamma, and beta activities that increased the subject's attention, alertness, and sensory processing during memorizing. Therefore, it is suggested that the auditory white noise should be listened to during remembering and learning visual items, which can boost memory performance.

Reduced connectivity of primary auditory and motor cortices during exposure to auditory white noise

Auditory white noise (WN) is widely used in daily life for inducing sleep, and in neuroscience to mask unwanted environmental noise and cues. However, WN was recently reported to influence corticospinal excitability and behavioral performance. Here, we expand previous preliminary findings on the influence of WN exposure on cortical functioning, and we hypothesize that it may modulate cortical connectivity.We tested our hypothesis by performing magnetoencephalography in 20 healthy subjects.WN reduces cortical connectivity of the primary auditory and motor regions with very distant cortical areas, showing a right lateralized connectivity reduction for primary motor cortex.The present results, together with previous finding concerning WN impact on corticospinal excitability and behavioral performance, further support the role of WN as a modulator of cortical function. This suggest avoiding its unrestricted use as a masking tool, while purposely designed and controlled WN application could be exploited to harness brain function and to treat neuropsychiatric conditions.

Sound Improves Neuronal Encoding of Visual Stimuli in Mouse Primary Visual Cortex.

In everyday life, we integrate visual and auditory information in routine tasks such as navigation and communication. While concurrent sound can improve visual perception, the neuronal correlates of audiovisual integration are not fully understood. Specifically, it remains unclear whether neuronal firing patters in the primary visual cortex (V1) of awake animals demonstrate similar sound-induced improvement in visual discriminability. Furthermore, presentation of sound is associated with movement in the subjects, but little is understood about whether and how sound-associated movement affects audiovisual integration in V1. Here, we investigated how sound and movement interact to modulate V1 visual responses in awake, head-fixed mice and whether this interaction improves neuronal encoding of the visual stimulus. We presented visual drifting gratings with and without simultaneous auditory white noise to awake mice while recording mouse movement and V1 neuronal activity. Sound modulated activity of 80% of light-responsive neurons, with 95% of neurons increasing activity when the auditory stimulus was present. A generalized linear model (GLM) revealed that sound and movement had distinct and complementary effects of the neuronal visual responses. Furthermore, decoding of the visual stimulus from the neuronal activity was improved with sound, an effect that persisted even when controlling for movement. These results demonstrate that sound and movement modulate visual responses in complementary ways, improving neuronal representation of the visual stimulus. This study clarifies the role of movement as a potential confound in neuronal audiovisual responses and expands our knowledge of how multimodal processing is mediated at a neuronal level in the awake brain.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Sound and movement are both known to modulate visual responses in the primary visual cortex; however, sound-induced movement has largely remained unaccounted for as a potential confound in audiovisual studies in awake animals. Here, authors found that sound and movement both modulate visual responses in an important visual brain area, the primary visual cortex, in distinct, yet complementary ways. Furthermore, sound improved encoding of the visual stimulus even when accounting for movement. This study reconciles contrasting theories on the mechanism underlying audiovisual integration and asserts the primary visual cortex as a key brain region participating in tripartite sensory interactions.

A pupillometric investigation of state regulation in adults scoring high versus low on ADHD symptomatology

According to the state regulation deficit (SRD) account, ADHD is associated with difficulties regulating tonic arousal levels, which may be due to inefficient effort allocation. We aimed to test the SRD account by using a target detection task with three different event rates (ER; 700 ms, 1800 ms, 6000 ms), in order to manipulate the tonic arousal state and its effects on performance and pupil indices in adults with high (n = 40) versus low (n = 36) ADHD symptom levels. In an additional condition, a fast ER (700 ms) was accompanied by auditory white noise (WN), to further increase tonic arousal level. The ER manipulation had a clear effect on RT and variability of RT. These effects were more pronounced for the high-ADHD group, especially for variability of RT with decreasing ER, suggestive of deficient upregulation of a tonic arousal state in that group, in line with their self-reported SRDs in daily life. Adding WN to the fast condition led to more errors, however similarly for both groups. Contrary to our predictions, the ER manipulation had no effect on tonic pupil size (as a measure of tonic arousal). Phasic pupil amplitude (as a measure of cognitive effort) linearly increased with decreasing ER, suggesting more effort allocation during slower ERs. WN decreased phasic pupil amplitude, but had no impact on tonic pupil size. Importantly, however, no ADHD-related differences were present for the pupil indices. In conclusion, adults with elevated levels of ADHD symptoms reported more SRDs in daily life and showed a performance pattern that suggests difficulties in upregulating but not downregulating the tonic arousal state. Surprisingly, these findings were not accompanied by group differences in pupillometric indices. This casts some doubts on the relationship between these measures of autonomic nervous system activity and state regulation, in particular in the context of ADHD symptomatology.

Stimulation with acoustic white noise enhances motor excitability and sensorimotor integration

Auditory white noise (WN) is widely used in neuroscience to mask unwanted environmental noise and cues, e.g. TMS clicks. However, to date there is no research on the influence of WN on corticospinal excitability and potentially associated sensorimotor integration itself. Here we tested the hypothesis, if WN induces M1 excitability changes and improves sensorimotor performance. M1 excitability (spTMS, SICI, ICF, I/O curve) and sensorimotor reaction-time performance were quantified before, during and after WN stimulation in a set of experiments performed in a cohort of 61 healthy subjects. WN enhanced M1 corticospinal excitability, not just during exposure, but also during silence periods intermingled with WN, and up to several minutes after the end of exposure. Two independent behavioural experiments highlighted that WN improved multimodal sensorimotor performance. The enduring excitability modulation combined with the effects on behaviour suggest that WN might induce neural plasticity. WN is thus a relevant modulator of corticospinal function; its neurobiological effects should not be neglected and could in fact be exploited in research applications.

Listening to White Noise Improved Verbal Working Memory in Children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: A Pilot Study.

Existing research demonstrates that children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) underperform in cognitive tasks involving working memory (WM) due to hypo-arousal, which has led to the development of arousal regulation models to determine proper levels of arousal and optimal cognitive outcomes. The present study focuses on investigating the effects of external auditory stimuli on verbal WM in children with ADHD. Thirteen children with ADHD (aged 6–10 years old) and thirteen age- and gender-matched children with typical development (TD) completed the verbal WM task when listening to no sound, white noise, or pleasant music. A two-way repeated-measures analysis of variance was used to compare the verbal WM performance between groups in the three auditory conditions. Children with ADHD showed the best verbal WM performance when listening to white noise and the worst performance when listening to no sound. Yet, children with TD performed the best in the no-sound condition and the worst in the white noise condition. Our findings suggest auditory white noise is beneficial for ideal arousal regulation and cognitive performance involving verbal WM for children with ADHD and support the moderate brain arousal model. Providing external white noise is a non-invasive and cost-effective approach to improving verbal WM in children with ADHD in real-world contexts.

Stationary auditory white noise improves postural control in healthy adults: A novel study on head-shaking.

Auditory cues might play a role in postural control. The primary aim of this study was to investigate the association between white noise and head-shake (HS) related changes in postural sway. Fifty healthy adults underwent Synapsys Posturography System (SPS) evaluation. The posturography (PG) evaluation consisted of two protocols: sensory organization test (SOT) and SOT with head-shake (HS) (HS-SOT). The standard SOT protocol of SPS involves a battery of six postural conditions. In the current study, participants underwent only four SOT conditions. The participants were asked to stand barefoot on the SPS platform (static platform and foam). The SOT standing conditions were as follow: (1) firm surface (force platform only) with eyes open (SOT1); (2) firm surface with eyes closed (SOT2); (3) foam surface (which was positioned on the force platform) with eyes open (SOT4); and (4) foam surface with eyes closed (SOT5). For the HS-SOT protocol, we asked the participants to move their heads left and right (i.e., yaw head rotation) in the mentioned SOT conditions. Each postural condition was 10 seconds long. Both SOT and HS-SOT postural conditions were conducted across the two hearing modes of silence and noise. To achieve our aims, comparison of sway parameters between SOT and HS-SOT, and between hearing modes were considered. White noise was associated with a reduction in postural sway. The reduction observed in sway area, sway amplitude, and sway frequency. Moreover, HS significantly increased postural sway in all HS-SOT conditions compared to their SOT equivalents (i.e., HS-SOT1 compared to SOT1, etc.). The presence of white noise was associated with a decrease in the HS-related increase in postural sway. Considering the results, this study adds to the body of literature suggesting that white noise contributes to postural control, and the implications of this for rehabilitation need to be further investigated.

Auditory noise improves balance control by cross-modal stochastic resonance

It is known that enhanced somatosensory function leads to improved balance, and somatosensory function can be enhanced by the appropriate level of mechanical, visual, or auditory noise. In this study, we tested the potential benefit of an auditory noise on balance control. We first assessed static balance by measuring 10 times the duration of standing on the toes of one leg with closed eyes. For the 18 healthy adult participants, the median standing times ranged from 2.1 to 45.6 s, and the median of the distribution was 9.9 s. From the above, the participants were divided into two groups: lower (below 10 s, n = 9) and higher (above 10 s, n = 9) balance groups. We then investigated the effect on balance control of an auditory white noise emitted at the detection threshold. Each individual performed 20 trials. The auditory noise was applied in half the trials, while the remaining trials were conducted without noise. The order of the noise and no-noise trials was quasi-random. In the lower-balance group, the median standing time significantly increased during the noise trials (10.3 s) compared with the time in the no-noise controls (5.2 s). On the other hand, noise had no significant effect in the higher-balance group, presumably because of a ceiling effect. These findings suggest that static balance in the lower-balance participants can be improved by applying a weak noise through cross-modal stochastic resonance.

Sensory white noise improves reading skills and memory recall in children with reading disability.

BackgroundReading disability (RD) is characterized by slow and inaccurate word reading development, commonly reflecting underlying phonological problems. We have previously shown that exposure to white noise acutely improves cognitive performance in children with ADHD. The question addressed here is whether white noise exposure yields positive outcomes also for RD. There are theoretical reasons to expect such a possibility: a) RD and ADHD are two overlapping neurodevelopmental disorders and b) since prior research on white noise benefits has suggested that a central mechanism might be the phenomenon of stochastic resonance, then adding certain kinds of white noise might strengthen the signal‐to‐noise ratio during phonological processing and phoneme–grapheme mapping.MethodsThe study was conducted with a group of 30 children with RD and phonological decoding difficulties and two comparison groups: one consisting of skilled readers (n = 22) and another of children with mild orthographic reading problems and age adequate phonological decoding (n = 30). White noise was presented experimentally in visual and auditory modalities, while the children performed tests of single word reading, orthographic word recognition, nonword reading, and memory recall.ResultsFor the first time, we show that visual and auditory white noise exposure improves some reading and memory capacities “on the fly” in children with RD and phonological decoding difficulties. By contrast, the comparison groups displayed either no benefit or a gradual decrease in performance with increasing noise. In interviews, we also found that the white noise exposure was tolerable or even preferred by many children.ConclusionThese novel findings suggest that poor readers with phonological decoding difficulties may be immediately helped by white noise during reading. Future research is needed to determine the robustness, mechanisms, and long‐term practical implications of the white noise benefits in children with reading disabilities.

The Impact of Auditory White Noise on Cognitive Performance

Although noise has often been characterized as a distractor, contemporary studies have emphasized how some individuals’ cognitive performance could benefit from task-irrelevant noise. Usually these studies focus on sub-attentive individuals and/or those who have been diagnosed with ADHD. An example of task-irrelevant noise is white noise (WN). Research regarding the effectiveness of WN in healthy adults has provided mixed results and therefore, the implications of WN remain unknown. The objective of this study was to determine the effects of WN on the cognitive performance of the neurotypical population. To test this, participants were asked to complete simultaneous amplitude discrimination and temporal order judgement (TOJ) tests several times in the presence of varying levels of WN. Participants were split into two groups––one containing individuals with regular prior WN exposure and the other with no previous experience with WN. The performances of participants with prior exposure to WN, but not those without prior exposure, resembled a U-shaped tuning curve for simultaneous amplitude discrimination. This indicates that familiarity with WN moderates its effectiveness on cognitive improvement. TOJ was not found to be affected by varying levels of WN intensity. The results of this study emphasized that there is a possibility that WN could facilitate higher levels of cognitive performance, though there is likely an adjustment period associated with its introduction to daily life. This warrants that additional research should be conducted in order to cultivate a definitive conclusion about the effects of WN.

Galvanic Vestibular Stimulation Produces Cross-Modal Improvements in Visual Thresholds.

BackgroundStochastic resonance (SR) refers to a faint signal being enhanced with the addition of white noise. Previous studies have found that vestibular perceptual thresholds are lowered with noisy galvanic vestibular stimulation (i.e., “in-channel” SR). Auditory white noise has been shown to improve tactile and visual thresholds, suggesting “cross-modal” SR.ObjectiveWe investigated galvanic vestibular white noise (nGVS) (n = 9 subjects) to determine the cross-modal effects on visual and auditory thresholds.MethodsWe measured auditory and visual perceptual thresholds of human subjects across a swath of different nGVS levels in order to determine if some individual-subject determined best nGVS level elicited a reduction in thresholds as compared the no noise condition (sham).ResultsWe found improvement in visual thresholds (by an average of 18%, p = 0.014). Subjects with higher (worse) visual thresholds with no stimulation (sham) improved more than those with lower thresholds (p = 0.04). Auditory thresholds were unchanged by vestibular stimulation.ConclusionThese results are the first demonstration of cross-modal improvement with galvanic vestibular stimulation, indicating galvanic vestibular white noise can produce cross-modal improvements in some sensory channels, but not all.

Phasic alerting enhances spatial orienting in healthy aging but not in mild cognitive impairment.

Previous studies in young adults have demonstrated strong functional links between phasic alerting and exogenous orienting. The present study examined changes in the dynamic interaction between these attentional networks in healthy aging and in amnestic mild cognitive impairment. Healthy young adults, healthy older adults, and patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (MCI) were asked to identify as quickly as possible the color of a target stimulus that appeared within one of 2 peripheral boxes. Orienting was manipulated by a brief flashing of the same (valid cue) or opposite (invalid cue) box in which the target subsequently appeared. Alerting was manipulated by presenting an auditory white noise burst simultaneously with the visual orienting cue on half of the trials. All 3 groups displayed significant alerting and orienting effects but differed in the nature of the interaction between alerting and orienting. As expected, young adults displayed increased orienting under high alerting conditions through a selective enhancement of validly cued targets. While older adults displayed a greater effect of alerting on orienting compared to young adults, MCI patients did not display a significant interaction between attentional networks. Results provide support for the presence of increased compensatory interactions between attentional networks in healthy aging that may be no longer effective with the emergence of clinical symptoms in MCI. The demonstration of qualitatively distinct effects of healthy aging and MCI suggests that behavioral tests of attentional network interactions may serve as cognitive markers in individuals at increased risk for developing AD. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).