Attention

Question 1

Selective attention

Answer 1

Filter out irrelevant material to select the relevant

Question 2

Executive control over attention / cognitive control

Answer 2

Control over processing when the response is not the automatic one or there are conflicting potential responses

Question 3

Sustained attention

Answer 3

Maintaining processing on current goals over extended periods of time

Question 4

Developmental disorder of attention?

Answer 4

ADHD

Question 5

Degenerative disorders of attention?

Answer 5

PD and AD

Question 6

Disorders of attention in young adults?

Answer 6

TBI, schizophrenia

Question 7

What are the three disorders of attention following focal lesions?

Answer 7

Simultanagnosia, extinction and neglect

Question 8

What are the two ways selective attention can act?

Answer 8

Can act ‘bottom up’ or ‘top down’

Question 9

What is bottom up selective attention? (example)

Answer 9

Bottom up or stimulus-driven attention: Salient information in the environment captures brain processing

(abrupt changes in the visual scene, such as onset/offset of luminance or sudden movement of an object, capture attention rapidly because they might be important for survival)

Question 10

What is top down selective attention? (example)

Answer 10

Top down or goal-directed attention: Processing is selectively directed towards certain information

(if you’re meeting a friend who’ll be wearing a red coat at a crowded station, you can selectively attend to red items, and filter out all non-red objects (distracters))

Question 11

Three ways to measure selective attention?

Answer 11

Track where we look (gaze direction)

Show it is possible to enhance perception

Measure how long it takes to detect a target

Question 12

What is free-viewing condition?

Answer 12

Where overt attention goes when no task

Question 13

What is the cost of attending to one feature?

Answer 13

Reduced perception at other spatial locations (Helmholtz).

Question 14

Is attention and looking the same?

Answer 14

No, we can pay attention covertly, i.e look at one object but attend to another

Question 15

When is attention detection faster?

Answer 15

If attention is already deployed at the location a target is presented (Posner) or when there are fewer distracting stimuli (Treisman).

Question 16

What brain regions are involved in shifting attention covertly and overtly?

Answer 16

Superior parietal lobe, intraparietal sulcus and frontal eye fields

(both hemispheres)

Question 17

Balint syndrome?

Answer 17

Patient with large, bilateral parietal lesions. Leads to illusory conjunctions (when binding of specific features fail).

Question 18

Simultanagnosia?

Answer 18

Inability of an individual to perceive more than a single object at a time, restricted spatial window of visual attention. Component of Balint’s.

Question 19

What can cause simultanagnosia?

Answer 19

Ventral occipito-temporal lesions cause a mild form of the disorder, while dorsal occipito-parietal lesions cause a more severe form of the disorder

Question 20

What is extinction?

Answer 20

Impairs the ability to perceive multiple stimuli of the same type simultaneously.

Limited attentional capacity and an attentional bias towards ipsilesional space

Question 21

Where do patients with extinction show lack of awareness?

Answer 21

Lack of awareness in the contralesional side of space (towards the left side space following a right lesion), they are more likely to attend to and become aware of ipsilesional stimuli at the expense of contralesional ones

Question 22

What can cause extinction?

Answer 22

Cortical lesion was almost always found in the right parietal angula gyrus region.

Question 23

What is neglect?

Answer 23

Neglect is a neuropsychological condition in which, after damage to one hemisphere of the brain is sustained, a deficit in attention to and awareness of one side of the field of vision is observed.

Question 24

What causes neglect?

Answer 24

Hemispatial neglect results most commonly from strokes and brain unilateral injury to the right cerebral hemisphere.

Neglect is often produced by massive strokes in the middle cerebral artery region

Question 25

What side is most often neglected?

Answer 25

Right hand side damaged, left hand side neglected

Rates in the critical stage of up to 80% causing visual neglect of the left-hand side of space.

Question 26

Sustained processing is?

Answer 26

Maintaining processing on current goals over extended periods of time.

Question 27

How do we measure sustained attention?

Answer 27

Mackworth: Vigilance decrement: reduction in ability to detect targets over time

Question 28

What brain areas are involved with sustained attention?

Answer 28

Right-sided frontal and parietal regions involved - more than other brain regions

Question 29

When is executive/cognitive control impaired?

Answer 29

After frontal lobe injury

Question 30

How do we measure executive attention?

Answer 30

Many different tasks have been used, e.g. Stroop test

Stroop test: Name the ink colour as fast as possible.

In the incongruent condition, where the ink colour is different to the word, we’re all slowed down to some extent.

Patients with frontal lobe damage may make many errors, actually saying the word instead of naming the ink colour.

Question 31

Selective vs executive attention

Answer 31

Selective attention typically refers to the kind of processing involved in orienting attention towards a specific set of entities or representations while ignoring others.

Executive attention, in contrast, refers to attention processing related to responding and task execution.