Department of Experimental Psychology, Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Leopoldstrasse 13, 80802 Munich, Germany.
Brain Stimul. 2012 Apr;5(2):124-9. doi: 10.1016/j.brs.2012.03.003. Epub 2012 Mar 25.
Probing brain functions by brain stimulation while simultaneously recording brain activity allows addressing major issues in cognitive neuroscience. We review recent studies where electroencephalography (EEG) has been combined with transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) in order to investigate possible neuronal substrates of visual perception and attention. TMS-EEG has been used to study both pre-stimulus brain activity patterns that affect upcoming perception, and also the stimulus-evoked and task-related inter-regional interactions within the extended visual-attentional network from which attention and perception emerge. Local processes in visual areas have been probed by directly stimulating occipital cortex while monitoring EEG activity and perception. Interactions within the attention network have been probed by concurrently stimulating frontal or parietal areas. The use of tasks manipulating implicit and explicit memory has revealed in addition a role for attentional processes in memory. Taken together, these studies helped to reveal that visual selection relies on spontaneous intrinsic activity in visual cortex prior to the incoming stimulus, their control by attention, and post-stimulus processes incorporating a re-entrant bias from frontal and parietal areas that depends on the task.
通过脑刺激同时记录脑活动来探测大脑功能，可以解决认知神经科学中的重大问题。我们回顾了最近的一些研究，这些研究将脑电图（EEG）与经颅磁刺激（TMS）相结合，以研究视觉感知和注意的可能神经元基础。TMS-EEG 被用于研究影响即将到来的感知的刺激前脑活动模式，以及从扩展的视觉注意网络中出现的刺激诱发和与任务相关的区域间相互作用。通过直接刺激枕叶皮层，同时监测 EEG 活动和感知，来探测视觉区域中的局部过程。通过同时刺激额或顶叶区域来探测注意力网络内的相互作用。使用操纵内隐和外显记忆的任务，还揭示了注意过程在记忆中的作用。总的来说，这些研究有助于揭示视觉选择依赖于传入刺激之前视觉皮层中的自发内在活动、注意力对其的控制，以及包括来自额区和顶区的再传入偏向的刺激后过程，这取决于任务。
