Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition, and Behavior, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, The Netherlands.
J Cogn Neurosci. 2010 May;22(5):848-59. doi: 10.1162/jocn.2009.21227.
Cognitive dysfunction in Parkinson's disease (PD) has been hypothesized to reflect a failure of cortical control. In keeping with this hypothesis, some of the cognitive deficits in PD resemble those seen in patients with lesions in the lateral pFC, which has been associated with top-down attentional control. However, there is no direct evidence for a failure of top-down control mechanisms in PD. Here we fill this gap by demonstrating disproportionate control by bottom-up attention to dimensional salience during attentional set shifting. Patients needed significantly more trials to criterion than did controls when shifting to a low-salient dimension while, remarkably, needing significantly fewer trials to criterion than did controls when shifting to a high-salient dimension. Thus, attention was captured by bottom-up attention to salient information to a greater extent in patients than in controls. The results provide a striking reinterpretation of prior set-shifting data and provide the first direct evidence for a failure of top-down attentional control, resembling that seen after catecholamine depletion in the pFC.
帕金森病 (PD) 中的认知功能障碍被假设反映了皮质控制的失败。根据这一假设，PD 中的一些认知缺陷类似于外侧前额叶皮质 (lPFC) 损伤患者的认知缺陷，而 lPFC 与自上而下的注意力控制有关。然而，目前还没有直接证据表明 PD 中存在自上而下控制机制的失败。在这里，我们通过证明在注意定势转移过程中，对维度显着性的自下而上注意力控制存在不成比例的情况来填补这一空白。与对照组相比，当患者从低显着性维度转移时，他们需要明显更多的试验才能达到标准，而当他们从高显着性维度转移时，他们需要明显更少的试验才能达到标准。因此，与对照组相比，患者的注意力更容易受到显着信息的自下而上注意力的影响。研究结果对先前的定势转移数据进行了引人注目的重新解释，并提供了首个直接证据证明注意力自上而下控制失败，类似于 pFC 中儿茶酚胺耗竭后观察到的情况。
