Scalf Paige E, Banich Marie T, Erickson Andrew B
Beckman Institute, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, 405 N Mathews, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.
Exp Brain Res. 2009 Apr;194(2):317-22. doi: 10.1007/s00221-009-1739-z. Epub 2009 Mar 1.
Previous work from our laboratory indicates that interhemispheric interaction (IHI) functionally increases the attentional capacity available to support performance on visual tasks (Banich in The asymmetrical brain, pp 261-302, 2003). Because manipulations of both computational complexity and selection demand alter the benefits of IHI to task performance, we argue that IHI may be a general strategy for meeting increases in attentional demand. Other researchers, however, have suggested that the apparent benefits of IHI to attentional capacity are an epiphenomenon of the organization of the visual system (Fecteau and Enns in Neuropsychologia 43:1412-1428, 2005; Marsolek et al. in Neuropsychologia 40:1983-1999, 2002). In the current experiment, we investigate whether IHI increases attentional capacity outside the visual system by manipulating the selection demands of an auditory temporal pattern-matching task. We find that IHI expands attentional capacity in the auditory system. This suggests that the benefits of requiring IHI derive from a functional increase in attentional capacity rather than the organization of a specific sensory modality.
我们实验室之前的研究表明，半球间交互作用（IHI）在功能上增强了可用于支持视觉任务表现的注意力容量（巴尼奇所著《不对称大脑》，第261 - 302页，2003年）。由于对计算复杂度和选择需求的操控都会改变IHI对任务表现的益处，我们认为IHI可能是一种应对注意力需求增加的通用策略。然而，其他研究人员提出，IHI对注意力容量的明显益处是视觉系统组织的一种附带现象（费克托和恩斯发表于《神经心理学》43卷：1412 - 1428页，2005年；马索莱克等人发表于《神经心理学》40卷：1983 - 1999页，2002年）。在当前实验中，我们通过操控一项听觉时间模式匹配任务的选择需求，来研究IHI是否会在视觉系统之外增强注意力容量。我们发现IHI扩大了听觉系统中的注意力容量。这表明要求IHI所带来的益处源自注意力容量在功能上的增强，而非特定感觉模态的组织形式。
