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Neroscience > Attention > Flashcards

Attention Flashcards

1
Q

What are the 6 types of attention?

A
  1. Reflexive Attention (stimulus-driven)
  2. Selective Attention (task-driven)
  3. Orienting
  4. Overt Attention
  5. Covert Attention
  6. Divided Attention
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2
Q

What is “Reflexive Attention (stimulus-driven)?

A

Bottom-up processes where a sensory stimulus captures our attention (the orienting reflex)

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3
Q

What is “Selective Attention (task-driven)?

A

Top-down ability to choose what to attend to

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4
Q

How can you study Visual Selective Attention?

A

A participant fixates on the central cross, while stimuli are flashed to the left and right fields. Instructed to covertly attend to left field and ignore the right and vice versa. Then response to the same stimuli on the left visual hemisphere are compared when they are attended and ignored.

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5
Q

What is “Orienting Attention”?

A

Turning one’s attention to something

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6
Q

What is “Overt Attention”?

A

Orienting with body

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7
Q

What is “Covert Attention”?

A

No motor movements

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8
Q

What is “Divided Attention”?

A

Process different pieces of information simultaneously

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9
Q

What are the four conditions in attention?

A
  1. Attend
  2. Unattend
  3. Active
  4. Passive
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10
Q

What is the difference between Attended and Unattended conditions?

A

If one message is attended and the other is unattended, only the attended is remembered. Unattended is lost and all participants can report is the gender of the speaker.

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11
Q

What is the difference between Active and Passive conditions?

A

Active: Pay attention to sounds
Passive: Ignore sounds/read a text/watch a video with sound turned off.

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12
Q

What is the problem with contrasting active to passive?

A

You might be changing general arousal also. Therefore, dichotic listening is generally a good way to study attention - because only the focus of attention is changed.

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13
Q

What 3 levels of observation show that attending to a stimulus leads to higher activation of those neurons?

A
  1. In auditory and visual cortex
  2. In subcortical stations (cochlea, midbrain & thalamus)
  3. In non-invasive recordings (EEG, MEG, fMRI) & single-cell recordings
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14
Q

How does attention change responses?

A

It enhances and reconfigures, temporarily, receptive fields in the sensory areas

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15
Q

Describe a study on ERPs being enhanced by attention (Hillyard et al.):

A

(See Attention Lecture, Slide 13 for graph) The solid line represents the idealized average voltage response to an attended input over time, the dashed line represents the response to an unattended input. The amplitude of the N1 component was enhanced when attending to the stimulus compared to ignoring the stimulus.

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16
Q

Who studied intracortical recordings from cortex?

A

Mesgarani & Chang (2012)

17
Q

How did Mesgarani & Chang (2012) study intracortical recordings from the cortex?

A
  • Presented sentences to human epilepsy patients
  • Took intracortical recordings from surface of human auditory cortex
  • Method: Stimulus spectrogram reconstruction from neural population
  • Responses: Measure neuronal activity and deduce what the stimulus was
18
Q

What were the conditions of Mesgarani & Chang’s (2012) study?

A
  • First auditory stimulus only, first being attended to
  • Second auditory stimulus only, second being attended to
  • Both auditory stimuli, first being attended to
  • Both auditory stimuli, second being attended to
    (In mixed condition, auditory cortex is responding as if the sentence being attended to is being presented alone)
19
Q

Who studied Attention Modulates Visual Cortex?

A

Hopfinger et al (2000)

20
Q

Describe Hopfinger et al’s (2000) study:

A
  • fMRI study
  • Attending to the left or right visual hemifield leads to increased activation in visual cortex of the contralateral hemisphere
  • No effect in primary visual cortex (V1)

(Selective Visual Attention: Before the target is delivered to the dorsal frontoparietal network, attention also activates the visual cortex.)

21
Q

What parts of the brain control attention?

A

The cortex and midbrain

22
Q

Where is the midbrain located?

A

It sits on top of the brainstem, under the cortex.

23
Q

What part of the brain controls selective attention during complex behaviour?

A

Frontoparietal network (prefrontal and posterior parietal cortex)

24
Q

What does a midbrain network direct for surprising or highly salient stimuli which have a spatial location?

A

Directs spatial attention and gaze to stimulus location

25
Q

What is the thin layer of inhibitory neurons surrounding the thalamus called?

A

Thalamic Reticular Nucleus (TRN)

26
Q

What did Wimmer et al (2015) say about the prefrontal cortex (PFC)?

A

The PFC exercises attentional control via switching on individual cells in TRN. Activated TRN cells then supress signals in thalamus - PFC controls what sensory input make it to the cortex

27
Q

What part of the brain controls the selective visual attention?

A

Dorsal frontoparietal network

28
Q

What does the dorsal frontoparietal network do?

A

Active when attention is directed to a spatial location in expectation of a task-relevant stimulus

29
Q

What part of the brain controls reflexive attention?

A

Ventral Right Network

30
Q

What does the Ventral Right Network do?

A

It directs attention to stimuli with high salience
- Suppressed during selective attention tasks (Corbetta et al., 2000)

31
Q

Who studied control of auditory selective attention?

A

Hill & Miller (2010)

32
Q

Describe Hill & Miller’s (2010) study:

A
  • During the cocktail party effect, a left-hemispheric network controls attention: the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and the left superior parietal lobule (SPL)
33
Q

What plastic changes in the cortex does attention lead to?

A
  1. Stimulus is in attentional focus
  2. PFC activates nucleus basalis (NB)
  3. NB releases acetylcholine (ACh)
  4. ACh targets cortical neurons representing the stimulus
  5. The connections of these neurons are strengthened via LTP (Hebbian learning)
34
Q

What is the superior colliculus called in non-mammalian vertebrates?

A

Optic Tectum

35
Q

What is the superior colliculus/tectum?

A

Highly-developed neural processor, does sensory discrimination and rapid decisions for motor actions necessary for survival and reproduction

36
Q

What are the layers of the superior colliculus?

A
  • Upper layers: receive input from retina and visual cortex, respond to visual stimuli
  • Intermediate layers: Input from all modalities and from most of the brain. This includes information about the salience and task relevance of the stimulus.
  • Lower layers: motoneurons that direct eye saccades and other orienting movements
37
Q

What is each superior colliculus layer?

A

Topographic map of space in retinocentric coordinates
- An object/event with a spatial location activates neurons in a specific location on the map
- Activation of motoneurons in a particular location will initiate a saccade which shifts the gaze and attention onto that location

38
Q

Why is there competition for superior colliculus space map?

A

Only one location can win
- The highest priority stimulus suppresses activity at all other locations
- Superior colliculus can override cortex and shift attentional focus on its own

Neroscience (5 decks)

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