Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, UC Berkeley, 132 Barker Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA; Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, Forskningsveien 3A, 0373 Oslo, Norway.
Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Washington Rd., Princeton, NJ 08544, USA.
Neuron. 2018 Aug 22;99(4):854-865.e5. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2018.07.032.
Classic models of attention suggest that sustained neural firing constitutes a neural correlate of sustained attention. However, recent evidence indicates that behavioral performance fluctuates over time, exhibiting temporal dynamics that closely resemble the spectral features of ongoing, oscillatory brain activity. Therefore, it has been proposed that periodic neuronal excitability fluctuations might shape attentional allocation and overt behavior. However, empirical evidence to support this notion is sparse. Here, we address this issue by examining data from large-scale subdural recordings, using two different attention tasks that track perceptual ability at high temporal resolution. Our results reveal that perceptual outcome varies as a function of the theta phase even in states of sustained spatial attention. These effects were robust at the single-subject level, suggesting that rhythmic perceptual sampling is an inherent property of the frontoparietal attention network. Collectively, these findings support the notion that the functional architecture of top-down attention is intrinsically rhythmic.
经典的注意力模型表明，持续的神经放电构成了持续注意力的神经相关物。然而，最近的证据表明，行为表现随时间波动，表现出与正在进行的、振荡的脑活动的频谱特征非常相似的时间动态。因此，有人提出周期性神经元兴奋性波动可能会影响注意力的分配和外显行为。然而，支持这一观点的经验证据很少。在这里，我们通过检查使用两种不同的注意力任务以高时间分辨率跟踪感知能力的大规模硬膜下记录的数据来解决这个问题。我们的结果表明，即使在持续的空间注意力状态下，感知结果也会随 theta 相位而变化。这些效应在单个主体水平上是稳健的，这表明有节奏的感知采样是额顶注意网络的固有特性。总的来说，这些发现支持了自上而下的注意力的功能结构本质上是有节奏的观点。
