Tutorial1 Flashcards

1
Q

What role does the brain stem’s Reticular Activating System (RAS) play in regards to attention, and what happens when there is damage here?

A

It’s the most basic attention function; poor extraction of information from environment, coma (unresponsiveness to most external stimuli), stupor, chronic vegetative state

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2
Q

Which brain regions are responsible for saccade (eye-movement) control and moving/directing attention from one object to another, and what do deficits here lead to?

A

Midbrain structures including superior colliculus; problems with turning attention from one point to another

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3
Q

Supranuclear palsy is the degeneration of which two brain areas, and what does this result in?

A

Basal ganglia and superior colliculus; patients behave as if blind and don’t instinctively turn towards stimuli unless commanded to (intact effortful processing)

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4
Q

Which brain region is responsible for early gating or filtering information, and what occurs when damaged?

A

Thalamus (especially pulvinar nucleus); inability to engage attention on one location and filter out irrelevant information from other locations

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5
Q

What is the parietal lobe responsible for, and what can damage here lead to?

A

Visual and spatial aspects of attention, including overall attentional resources to a particular stimulus or task, and when shifts in attention are necessary; hemispatial neglect (inattention to one side of space)

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6
Q

Which region modulates the ability to select an appropriate response based on incoming information?

A

Cingulate cortex (interfaces between cortical and subcortical regions)

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7
Q

Which brain regions are involved with inhibiting inappropriate responses?

A

Frontal lobes - initiating responses; motor and premotor cortices - making the movements; supplementary motor area - dealing with abstract concepts, selecting and extracting meaning and working on “online” information

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8
Q

What happens when there is damage to the frontal lobes?

A

Distractibility or interference; attentional resources are captured by irrelevant information and not focused on relevant information

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9
Q

What are some experimental paradigms we can use to test or manipulate different mechanisms of attention?

A

Endogenous (internal) or exogenous (environmental) shifts in attention; Response biases (response selection); Distractor interference (inhibition of appropriate info); Inhibition of return (time taken for attention to recover); Visual search (attention shifting); Priming (unconscious processing); Temporal order judgements (order of events)

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10
Q

Our brain relies on cues to allocate attentional resources, name four of these

A

Exogenous (from the environment); Endogenous (driven by goals); Overt (involves shifting of gaze); Covert (attention shift without shifting the eyes)

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11
Q

What’s the difference between a valid and invalid endogenous cue

A

Valid directs attention towards the target; invalid directs attention away from the target

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12
Q

According to the Posner Cueing Paradigm, if cues are to be exogenous, where do they need to be cueing?

A

At the location itself (not arrows)

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13
Q

List some behavioural response measures used in attentional tasks

A

Manual (e.g. clicking a mouse); Saccadic (eye-tracking); Verbal; Motion capture

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14
Q

What is the Pre-Trial Period (PTP)?

A

Time that elapses before onset of first stimuli in trial

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15
Q

What does Stimulus Onset Asynchrony (SOA) refer to?

A

Time lag between onset of cue and onset of target (influenced by conscious or unconscious perception)

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16
Q

What do Inter-Trial Intervals refer to?

A

Time period between trials (can influence how we recover attention/move attention between tasks)

17
Q

What does Stimulus Presentation Time refer to?

A

The length of time a stimulus (cue/target) is presented before it offsets (influences whether/how we encode a stimulus)