State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning & IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.
Key Laboratory of Brain, Cognition and Education Sciences, Ministry of Education, China, School of Psychology, Center for Studies of Psychological Application, and Guangdong Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, South China Normal University, China.
Neuropsychologia. 2021 Jan 22;151:107719. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2020.107719. Epub 2020 Dec 9.
Selective attention can facilitate performance by filtering irrelevant information and temporary maintaining limited information to accomplish the current task. However, the neural substrate how attentional selection can be guided by visual working memory (vWM) is not clear. Here, we recorded electrophysiological signals during vWM retention and investigated the relationship between objects held in memorial templates and the subsequent attentional selection during visual search. We observed that sustained posterior contralateral delay activity (CDA) was present and scaled with lateral vWM loads during the whole period of vWM retention, but that it was absent when objects were bilaterally held in vWM. Surprisingly, a strikingly similar pattern emerged for modulations in the averaged posterior alpha (8-12 Hz) power during the late period but not during the early period of retention. More importantly, it was the alpha modulation, but not the CDA, that strongly predicted the subsequent biomarker of attentional selection (the memorial template-induced N2pc) during visual search. We further observed the N2pc amplitudes decreased with increasing memory loads and predicted the same gradation of the final behavioral accuracy in visual search. All these results suggested that the subsequent memorial template-induced N2pc is response to the level of top-down attentional guiding effect caused by vWM. Our results provide neurophysiological evidence that keeping multiple templates in working memory simultaneously weakens the guiding effect to the following attentional selection.
选择性注意可以通过过滤无关信息和临时维持有限的信息来促进表现，以完成当前的任务。然而，注意选择如何可以通过视觉工作记忆（vWM）引导的神经基质尚不清楚。在这里，我们在 vWM 保留期间记录了电生理信号，并研究了在视觉搜索过程中保持在记忆模板中的物体与随后的注意力选择之间的关系。我们观察到，在 vWM 保留的整个期间，持续的对侧后延迟活动（CDA）存在且与横向 vWM 负载成正比，但当物体在 vWM 中双侧保持时，它不存在。令人惊讶的是，在保留后期而不是早期，在后alpha（8-12 Hz）功率的平均调制中出现了惊人相似的模式。更重要的是，正是 alpha 调制，而不是 CDA，强烈预测了视觉搜索中随后的注意力选择生物标志物（记忆模板诱导的 N2pc）。我们进一步观察到 N2pc 振幅随记忆负荷的增加而降低，并预测了视觉搜索中最终行为准确性的相同渐变。所有这些结果表明，随后的记忆模板诱导的 N2pc 是对 vWM 引起的自上而下注意力引导效应水平的反应。我们的结果提供了神经生理学证据，表明同时保持多个模板在工作记忆中会削弱对后续注意力选择的引导作用。
