Mozolic Jennifer L, Joyner David, Hugenschmidt Christina E, Peiffer Ann M, Kraft Robert A, Maldjian Joseph A, Laurienti Paul J
Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Medical Center Boulevard, Winston-Salem, NC 27157, USA.
BMC Neurol. 2008 Sep 25;8:35. doi: 10.1186/1471-2377-8-35.
Processing stimuli in one sensory modality is known to result in suppression of other sensory-specific cortices. Additionally, behavioral experiments suggest that the primary consequence of paying attention to a specific sensory modality is poorer task performance in the unattended sensory modality. This study was designed to determine how focusing attention on the auditory or visual modality impacts neural activity in cortical regions responsible for processing stimuli in the unattended modality.
Functional MRI data were collected in 15 participants who completed a cued detection paradigm. This task allowed us to assess the effects of modality-specific attention both during the presence and the absence of targets in the attended modality.
The results of this experiment demonstrate that attention to a single sensory modality can result in decreased activity in cortical regions that process information from an unattended sensory modality (cross-modal deactivations). The effects of attention are likely additive with stimulus-driven effects with the largest deactivations being observed during modality-specific selective attention, in the presence of a stimulus in that modality.
Modality-specific selective attention results in behavioral decrements in unattended sensory modalities. The imaging results presented here provide a neural signature (cross-modal deactivation) for modality-specific selective attention.
已知处理一种感觉模态中的刺激会导致对其他感觉特异性皮层的抑制。此外，行为实验表明，专注于特定感觉模态的主要后果是在未被关注的感觉模态中任务表现较差。本研究旨在确定将注意力集中在听觉或视觉模态上如何影响负责处理未被关注模态中刺激的皮层区域的神经活动。
收集了15名完成线索检测范式的参与者的功能磁共振成像数据。该任务使我们能够评估在被关注模态中存在和不存在目标时特定模态注意力的影响。
本实验结果表明，对单一感觉模态的注意力可导致处理来自未被关注感觉模态信息的皮层区域活动减少（跨模态失活）。注意力的影响可能与刺激驱动的影响相加，在特定模态选择性注意力期间，在该模态存在刺激的情况下观察到最大的失活。
特定模态的选择性注意力会导致未被关注的感觉模态中的行为下降。此处呈现的成像结果为特定模态的选择性注意力提供了一种神经特征（跨模态失活）。
