Perceptual visual grouping under inattention: electrophysiological functional imaging.

Two types of perceptual visual grouping, differing in complexity of shape formation, were examined under inattention. Fourteen participants performed a similarity judgment task concerning two successive briefly presented central targets surrounded by task-irrelevant simple and complex grouping patterns. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 22 scalp electrodes and source current density estimations were conducted for the net response to the task-irrelevant background patterns, using low-resolution electromagnetic tomography (LORETA). Although participants' subjective reports indicated that neither type of organization induced awareness, electrophysiological results showed they both evoked significant activation in occipital, parieto-temporal and frontal brain areas. Behavioral results demonstrated that only grouping of the simple pattern arose under inattention. In contrast to the complex pattern, the processing of the simple pattern was associated with an initially longer latency and higher activation beginning at 130 ms. These results support the distinction of grouping patterns differing in complexity of shape formation.