This document discusses attention and how it allows us to focus on important stimuli while filtering out less important information. It defines two types of attention - overt attention which orients the senses outward and covert attention which guides attention inward without external cues. Voluntary attention is top-down and guided by goals, while reflexive attention is bottom-up and driven by sensory stimuli. The document also examines how attention modulates neural responses in the brain and discusses several phenomena related to failures of attention such as inattentional blindness.
This document discusses attention and how it allows us to focus on important stimuli while filtering out less important information. It defines two types of attention - overt attention which orients the senses outward and covert attention which guides attention inward without external cues. Voluntary attention is top-down and guided by goals, while reflexive attention is bottom-up and driven by sensory stimuli. The document also examines how attention modulates neural responses in the brain and discusses several phenomena related to failures of attention such as inattentional blindness.
This document discusses attention and how it allows us to focus on important stimuli while filtering out less important information. It defines two types of attention - overt attention which orients the senses outward and covert attention which guides attention inward without external cues. Voluntary attention is top-down and guided by goals, while reflexive attention is bottom-up and driven by sensory stimuli. The document also examines how attention modulates neural responses in the brain and discusses several phenomena related to failures of attention such as inattentional blindness.
Attention can be defined as a concentration of mental activity that allows you to take in a limited portion of the vast stream of information available from both your sensory world and your memory
Attention decides what’s important and when it is important
What does it mean to be relevant? How does the brain evaluate what’s relevant and what is not? In selective attention, we attend to some stimuli and ignore others We often think that attention is all 2 ways to direct attention: about what we are focusing on, + Overt attention – Orienting the body and but it’s also about what sense organs toward a stimulus information our brain is trying to + Covert attention – Guiding attention without filter out. any external cues that you are doing so Voluntary vs Reflexive Attention Voluntary vs Reflexive Attention + Voluntary or endogenous attention • Top-down process • Guided by our goals, expectations, and rewards + Reflexive or exogenous attention • Bottom-up process • Driven by sensory stimuli that involuntary capture our attention Balancing + The two attention systems are in opposition to one another
Attention + We are either working toward our
momentary goals or orienting to stimuli that distract us from those goals + Allows us to not be too focused that we miss danger and not too scatterbrained that we never accomplish anything Cocktail Party Effect + In loud environments there are multiple auditory signals that can be attended to + We have the ability to selectively attend to any one auditory stream at a given time + Only a limited amount of information can be perceived at any given time + Do these bottlenecks occur early in the sensory processing stream or late in the Bottlenecks perception forming phase? + Does the brain process all sensory information and then choose, or does it limit the options before the processing occur? Anatomy of Attention + Multiple areas involved in the control of attention both cortical and subcortical + Cortical + Superior frontal cortex, posterior parietal cortex, posterior superior temporal cortex, and anterior cingulate cortex + Subcortical + Superior colliculus in midbrain and pulvinar nucleus of the thalamus Stimulus Evoked EEG Response + When a stimulus is shown to a subject while recording EEG, the following occurs at the elctrodes near the occipital lobe + Big positive ERP wave starts at 60-70ms and peaks at ~100ms + P1 wave + Followed by a negative wave that peaks at ~180ms + N1 wave Attention's Effect on ERPs
+ Attention modulates the amplitude of the
sensory-evoked ERPs beginning with the P1 wave + P1 is larger for attended stimuli when stimulus in the same location and not attended to + Same is true for auditory and tactile attention + P1 wave is a sensory evoked signal + This supports early selection models Evidence from fMRI + Used a cueing task where there was an arrow and then 8 seconds later there were flickering black and white checker presented + Subjects made a response if they saw any grey targets on the cued side + Results showed greater activation in the contralateral visual cortex from where the attention was directed Evidence from fMRI + When multiple stimuli were presented simultaneously without attentional demands, the simuli competed with one another + The neural response was reduced compared to when one stimulus was presented alone + Attention was directed to one stimulus while all were shown together + The reduced responses were not present, and the response was as if there were only one stimulus + Effect was largest in V4 + Late processing and large receptive fields Inhibition of Return + Our automatic orienting system has built-in mechanisms to prevent reflexively directed attention from getting stuck at a location for more than a couple hundred milliseconds + Occurs after 300 milliseconds + After a reflexive orientation to a location in space, return of attention to that location is inhibited + Subjects respond slower to stimuli that are presented in a region of space where a distractor had been present previously Visual Search + Gaze is biased towards new locations and rarely returns to areas that have already been searched + Items are easier to identify if they have salient features + Reaction time remains quick despite adding new distractors + Much harder when target shares features with distractors + Reaction time increases as more distractors are added + Spatial attention required to separate features of the target from the distractor features Failures in Attention Inattentional Blindness and Change Blindness Inattentional Blindness https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDISZ7zT8YQ Change Blindness https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkEMkgVI3y4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FoghxotdYU Flicker Paradigm https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bh_9XFzbWV8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWSxSQsspiQ&t=27s + Chronic condition marked by persistent inattention, hyperactivity, and sometimes impulsivity
Attention Deficit + ADHD may be linked to white matter
differences in attention networks
Hyperactivity + Studies show decreased white matter
throughout the brain especially
Disorder (ADHD) pronounced in the prefrontal cortex
+ Low norepinephrine and dopamine activity + Low bloodflow in the prefronal cortex + The complete lack of attention to one side of the body and visual field + Only notices you on the side, combs hair on one side, eat from one side, read Unilateral Neglect only on one side + Usually due to a stroke that effects the attention network in one hemisphere + Patients have no awareness of the deficit Eye Movements, Executive Functions, and Unilateral Neglect + Eye movements are biased to the side unaffected by the stroke + Those without neglect search the entire visual field + Clock test + Patients draw half of the clock