Attention Flashcards
What is arousal?
the global level of alertness in an individual
What is selective attention?
- the process of selecting or focusing on one or more stimuli for enhanced processing and analysis
- sensory input or internal though
- overt vs. covert attention
What is reflexive attention?
- exogenously-controlled attention
- involuntary reorientation towards sudden or important event
Reflexive/exogenously-controlled attention reaction time
- very fast reaction time, but very brief (if stimuli irrelevant)
Is reflexive attention bottom-up or top-down and what does this mean?
- It is a bottom-up process
- meaning, sensory inputs trigger higher order processing
Voluntary attention
- consciously- or endogenously- controlled attention
- attention shift comes from within because of interests, goals, etc
- allows for slower, longer-lasting, accurate attention
Is voluntary attention top-down or bottom-up and what does this mean?
- voluntary attention is a top-down process
- higher order processing controls lower order processing
Cortical areas involved in voluntary attention
What type of attention is the Dorsal frontoparietal network involved in and what parts of the brain are included?
- involved in voluntary attention
- includes the Intraparietal sulcus/ superior parietal lobule (IPS/SPL)
- and the frontal eye field (FEF)
What does the Intraparietal sulcus (IPS)/superior parital lobule (SPL)do?
- encodes salience (priority) map that controls voluntary shifts of attention
- directs attention
- eye movement planning
part of dorsal frontoparietal network: voluntary attention
What does the FEF do? (frontal eye field)
- premotor cortex
- establishes gaze in accordance with cognitive goals (top-down processes)
part of dorsal frontoparietal network: voluntary attention
What type of attention is the temporoparietal network involved in and what parts of the brain are included?
- reflexive attention
- includes the temporoparietal junction and ventral frontal cortex
What does the temporoparietal junction do?
- establishes gaze in accordance with characteristics of stimuli (bottom-up)
- shift happens after unexpected target onset
What does the pulvinar do? Where is it located?
- in the thalamus
- orientation and shifting of attention
- isolates relevant information by filtering out sidtractors (mainly covert attention)
- mainly top-down processes
subcortical area involved in attention
What ddoes the superior colliculus do? Where is it located?
- located in posterior midbrain
- implements planned eye movements
- mainly overt attention, though some role in covert attention
- top-down and bottom-up processes
subcortical areas involved in attention
What is inattentional blindness and when can it occur?
- can occur in a shadowing task using two sources of visual stimuli
- subjects fail to percieve unattended stimuli (gorilla example)
How does attention shape neuron firing?
- attention can cause the overall size of the receptive fields to shrink- sharpening the receptive field
Do neurons really repsond to locus of atttention? Monkey experiment explain
- Action potentials were counted while attention was covertly directed at the preferred stimulus, and as expected, a robust response was recorded.
- In the second condition, the same display was presented while recording from the same neuron, but this time the monkey was instructed to direct covert attention elsewhere within the neuron’s receptive field.
- Because (1) the favored stimulus was present, (2) the same cell was being recorded, and (3) the animal’s gaze had not shifted, you might expect that the rate of firing remained robust, but that was not the result. Instead, rates of firing were significantly diminished in the second condition.
- Only the shift in attention could account for this change
What actions are included in higher order cognition/executive function?
- thoughts, feelings, and choices
- direct attnetion to important stimulus/task
- formulate a plan of action
- prefrontal cortex (PFC)
Higher order cognition/executive function
Orbitofrontal PFC
- located basally
- goal-directed behaviors
- signaling expected outcomes
Higher order cognition/executive function
Dorsolateral PFC
- judgement
- planning
- insight
- working memory
Why is the claustrum important?
- seat of consciousness?
- reciprocal connections to almost all cortical areas
- provides resilience to distractions
What are the easy problems of consciousness?
- understanding how particular patterns of neural activity create specific conscious experiences
What does it mean if something is cognitively impenetrable?
neural processing that can’t be simplified
Hard problems of consciousness
- understanding subjective counscious experiences (ex. experience of colors)
- decision making (executive function)
