Cohen Jason C, Bolanowski Stanley J, Verrillo Ronald T
Institute for Sensory Research, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY 13244, USA.
Somatosens Mot Res. 2005 Dec;22(4):269-79. doi: 10.1080/08990220500420335.
The interaction of excitation and inhibition in responses due to attentional mechanisms in the visual system has been investigated. The studies reported herein use the tactile system of humans to test a specific hypothesis about the processes of attention that have never been directly addressed. Both exogenous and endogenous Inhibition of Return (IOR) reaction-time paradigms with a 100 Hz, 35 microm of peak displacement amplitude were used. In these experiments multiple Stimulus Onset Asynchronies were tested which made it difficult for subjects to learn timing patterns. We tested whether a detection time to a target which is to be attended to is a composite of at least two underlying mechanisms. These mechanisms were explored using exogenous and endogenous IOR experiments. It is hypothesized that these mechanisms work in a push-pull fashion: one deploying attention when new events occur, and the other withdrawing attention ("Disengagement") after it has been deployed. Based on the results, a new hypothesis is proposed stating that one form of attention (selective attention) competes with IOR in determining the time taken to detect a target in the tactile system.
视觉系统中注意力机制所引发的反应里，兴奋与抑制的相互作用已得到研究。本文所报告的研究利用人类的触觉系统来检验一个关于注意力过程的特定假设，该假设此前从未被直接探讨过。实验采用了外源性和内源性返回抑制（IOR）反应时范式，刺激峰值位移幅度为35微米，频率为100赫兹。在这些实验中，测试了多个刺激起始异步情况，这使得受试者难以学习时间模式。我们测试了对有待关注目标的检测时间是否至少由两种潜在机制构成。利用外源性和内源性IOR实验对这些机制进行了探究。据推测，这些机制以推挽方式运作：一种机制在新事件发生时部署注意力，另一种机制在注意力被部署后撤回注意力（“脱离”）。基于研究结果，提出了一个新的假设，即一种注意力形式（选择性注意力）在确定触觉系统中检测目标所需时间时与返回抑制相互竞争。
