Leibniz Research Centre for Working Environment and Human Factors, Ardeystraße 67, 44139, Dortmund, Germany.
Sci Rep. 2020 Aug 17;10(1):13860. doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-70004-2.
Attention can be allocated to mental representations to select information from working memory. To date, it remains ambiguous whether such retroactive shifts of attention involve the inhibition of irrelevant information or the prioritization of relevant information. Investigating asymmetries in posterior alpha-band oscillations during an auditory retroactive cueing task, we aimed at differentiating those mechanisms. Participants were cued to attend two out of three sounds in an upcoming sound array. Importantly, the resulting working memory representation contained one laterally and one centrally presented item. A centrally presented retro-cue then indicated the lateral, the central, or both items as further relevant for the task (comparing the cued item(s) to a memory probe). Time-frequency analysis revealed opposing patterns of alpha lateralization depending on target eccentricity: A contralateral decrease in alpha power in target lateral trials indicated the involvement of target prioritization. A contralateral increase in alpha power when the central item remained relevant (distractor lateral trials) suggested the de-prioritization of irrelevant information. No lateralization was observed when both items remained relevant, supporting the notion that auditory alpha lateralization is restricted to situations in which spatial information is task-relevant. Altogether, the data demonstrate that retroactive attentional deployment involves excitatory and inhibitory control mechanisms.
注意力可以分配到心理表象上，以从工作记忆中选择信息。迄今为止，对于这种注意力的回溯转移是否涉及无关信息的抑制或相关信息的优先化，仍然存在歧义。在听觉回溯提示任务中研究后顶叶 alpha 波段振荡的不对称性，我们旨在区分这些机制。参与者被提示在即将到来的声音数组中关注三个声音中的两个。重要的是，由此产生的工作记忆表示包含一个侧面和一个中央呈现的项目。然后，中央呈现的回溯提示指示侧面、中央或两者作为任务的进一步相关项（将提示的项与记忆探针进行比较）。时频分析显示，alpha 侧化取决于目标偏心度呈现出相反的模式：当目标是侧面时，alpha 功率的对侧减少表明目标被优先化。当中央项目仍然相关时（分心物侧试验），alpha 功率的对侧增加表明无关信息的优先级降低。当两个项目都相关时，没有观察到侧化，这支持了听觉 alpha 侧化仅限于空间信息与任务相关的情况的观点。总的来说，数据表明回溯性注意力部署涉及兴奋性和抑制性控制机制。
