Topography and source analysis of brain activity associated with selective spatial attention and memory search.

We investigated the topographical aspects of the ERP reflections of visual spatial attention and memory search. Spatial attention was found to enhance the amplitudes of the P1 and N1 deflections. The brain activity in the P1-N1 latency range could be modeled with a single moving equivalent dipole, or alternatively with two stationary dipoles in a spatio-temporal dipole model. The dipoles were located in mesial and lateral posterior brain regions. Similar dipole solutions were obtained for ERPs to attended and unattended stimuli. Increasing the memory search requirements of the task resulted in an increase of late negativity, which was topographically distinguishable from the P3 component.