Sole Puig Maria, Pallarés Josep Marco, Perez Zapata Laura, Puigcerver Laura, Cañete Josep, Supèr Hans
Dept of Cognition, Development and Educational Psychology, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain.
Neuroscience Inst, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain.
PLoS One. 2016 Dec 14;11(12):e0167646. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0167646. eCollection 2016.
Neural mechanisms of attention allow selective sensory information processing. Top-down deployment of visual-spatial attention is conveyed by cortical feedback connections from frontal regions to lower sensory areas modulating late stimulus responses. A recent study reported the occurrence of small eye vergence during orienting top-down attention. Here we assessed a possible link between vergence and attention by comparing visual event related potentials (vERPs) to a cue stimulus that induced attention to shift towards the target location to the vERPs to a no-cue stimulus that did not trigger orienting attention. The results replicate the findings of eye vergence responses during orienting attention and show that the strength and time of eye vergence coincide with the onset and strength of the vERPs when subjects oriented attention. Our findings therefore support the idea that eye vergence relates to and possibly has a role in attentional selection.
注意力的神经机制允许选择性的感觉信息处理。视觉空间注意力的自上而下的部署是通过从额叶区域到较低感觉区域的皮质反馈连接来实现的，这些连接调节晚期刺激反应。最近的一项研究报告称，在自上而下定向注意力的过程中会出现小幅度的眼球辐辏。在这里，我们通过比较视觉事件相关电位（vERP）来评估辐辏与注意力之间的可能联系，将诱导注意力转向目标位置的提示刺激的vERP与未触发定向注意力的无提示刺激的vERP进行比较。结果重复了定向注意力过程中眼球辐辏反应的发现，并表明当受试者定向注意力时，眼球辐辏的强度和时间与vERP的起始和强度相吻合。因此，我们的发现支持了眼球辐辏与注意力选择相关且可能在其中发挥作用的观点。
