Alpha oscillations and the control of voluntary saccadic behavior

Hamm, Jordan P.; Sabatinelli, Dean; Clementz, Brett A.

doi:10.1007/s00221-012-3167-8

Cited by 14 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 63 publications

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“…Presenting brief visual cues to one hemifield, which signals that a saccade is to be performed in the direction of the cue after a specified anticipatory delay period, prompts both alpha power decrease from precue baseline in the hemisphere contralateral to the cue position and alpha power increase in the hemisphere ipsilateral to the cue position. Similar lateralized posterior alpha power decrease has been found to vary with nonfoveal stimulus gating and saccadic control (overview by Hamm, Sabatinelli, & Clementz, 2012). Moreover, altered saccade performance in schizophrenia patients (SZ) has been associated with altered functional connectivity in a right hemisphere network that also involves anterior cingulate regions (ACC; Manoach et al, 2007;Tu et al, 2010).…”

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confidence: 72%

Deficient attention modulation of lateralized alpha power in schizophrenia

et al. 2016

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Modulation of 8-14 Hz (alpha) activity in posterior brain regions is associated with covert attention deployment in visuospatial tasks. Alpha power decrease contralateral to to-be-attended stimuli is believed to foster subsequent processing, such as retention of task-relevant input. Degradation of this alpha-regulation mechanism may reflect an early stage of disturbed attention regulation contributing to impaired attention and working memory commonly found in schizophrenia. The present study tested this hypothesis of early disturbed attention regulation by examining alpha power modulation in a lateralized cued delayed response task in 14 schizophrenia patients (SZ) and 25 healthy controls (HC). Participants were instructed to remember the location of a 100-ms saccade-target cue in the left or right visual hemifield in order to perform a delayed saccade to that location after a retention interval. As expected, alpha power decrease during the retention interval was larger in contralateral than ipsilateral posterior regions, and SZ showed less of this lateralization than did HC. In particular, SZ failed to show hemifield-specific alpha modulation in posterior right hemisphere. Results suggest less efficient modulation of alpha oscillations that are considered critical for attention deployment and item encoding and, hence, may affect subsequent spatial working memory performance.

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confidence: 72%

Deficient attention modulation of lateralized alpha power in schizophrenia

et al. 2016

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“…The desynchronization prior to saccades is stronger contralateral to the saccade goal (Medendorp et al, ). Since the brain networks recruited during covert and overt shifts of attention mostly overlap (Corbetta et al, ; de Haan, Moryan, & Rorden, ; Ikkai & Curtis, ; Nobre, Gitelman, Dias, & Mesulam, ), the alpha dynamics of visuospatial attention allocation may covary with saccadic behavior (Hamm et al, ). This could explain why we observed an overall rightward lateralization in left‐to‐right reading, but not in RSVP.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Regarding language perception, there is a left-lateralized desynchronization in word recognition tasks that increases with the "wordiness" of a stimulus (Strauss et al, 2014). Regarding saccade preparation, there is a growing body of research suggesting that alpha dynamics related to visuospatial attention may covary with saccadic behavior (Hamm, Sabatinelli, & Clementz, 2012). Presaccadic desynchronization is strongest contralateral to the saccade goal (Medendorp et al, 2007), and emerges in a 500-ms period before the go cue for a saccade, reflecting gazecentric stimulus gating (Van Der Werf, Jensen, Fries, & Medendorp, 2008).…”

Section: Alpha Power As a Marker Of Attention Distributionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lateralization of posterior alpha EEG reflects the distribution of spatial attention during saccadic reading

2017

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Visuospatial attention is an important mechanism in reading that governs the uptake of information from foveal and parafoveal regions of the visual field. However, the spatiotemporal dynamics of how attention is allocated during eye fixations are not completely understood. The current study explored the use of EEG alpha-band oscillations to investigate the spatial distribution of attention during reading. We reanalyzed two data sets, focusing on the lateralization of alpha activity at posterior scalp sites. In each experiment, participants read short lists of German nouns in two paradigms: either by freely moving their eyes (saccadic reading) or by fixating the screen center while the text moved passively from right to left at the same average speed (RSVP paradigm). In both paradigms, upcoming words were either visible or masked, and foveal processing load was manipulated by varying the words' lexical frequencies. Posterior alpha lateralization revealed a sustained rightward bias of attention during saccadic reading, but not in the RSVP paradigm. Interestingly, alpha lateralization was not influenced by word frequency (foveal load) or preview during the preceding fixation. Hence, alpha did not reflect transient attention shifts within a given fixation. However, in both experiments, we found that in the saccadic reading condition a stronger alpha lateralization shortly before a saccade predicted shorter fixations on the subsequently fixated word. These results indicate that alpha lateralization can serve as a measure of attention deployment and its link to oculomotor behavior in reading.

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“…Alpha oscillations have been suggested to play a role in the suppression of the excitability in sensory and motor areas, e.g. regulating the receptiveness/readiness in saccadic control network circuits, and to serve a top-down control function for suppressing externally driven saccades in favor of internal goals [110]. Beta oscillations are important for the maintenance of a current motor state, and beta power is highest during holding periods after movements [86].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multiple Language Use Influences Oculomotor Task Performance: Neurophysiological Evidence of a Shared Substrate between Language and Motor Control

et al. 2016

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In the present electroencephalographical study, we asked to which extent executive control processes are shared by both the language and motor domain. The rationale was to examine whether executive control processes whose efficiency is reinforced by the frequent use of a second language can lead to a benefit in the control of eye movements, i.e. a non-linguistic activity. For this purpose, we administrated to 19 highly proficient late French-German bilingual participants and to a control group of 20 French monolingual participants an antisaccade task, i.e. a specific motor task involving control. In this task, an automatic saccade has to be suppressed while a voluntary eye movement in the opposite direction has to be carried out. Here, our main hypothesis is that an advantage in the antisaccade task should be observed in the bilinguals if some properties of the control processes are shared between linguistic and motor domains. ERP data revealed clear differences between bilinguals and monolinguals. Critically, we showed an increased N2 effect size in bilinguals, thought to reflect better efficiency to monitor conflict, combined with reduced effect sizes on markers reflecting inhibitory control, i.e. cue-locked positivity, the target-locked P3 and the saccade-locked presaccadic positivity (PSP). Moreover, effective connectivity analyses (dynamic causal modelling; DCM) on the neuronal source level indicated that bilinguals rely more strongly on ACC-driven control while monolinguals rely on PFC-driven control. Taken together, our combined ERP and effective connectivity findings may reflect a dynamic interplay between strengthened conflict monitoring, associated with subsequently more efficient inhibition in bilinguals. Finally, L2 proficiency and immersion experience constitute relevant factors of the language background that predict efficiency of inhibition. To conclude, the present study provided ERP and effective connectivity evidence for domain-general executive control involvement in handling multiple language use, leading to a control advantage in bilingualism.

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Alpha oscillations and the control of voluntary saccadic behavior

Cited by 14 publications

References 63 publications

Deficient attention modulation of lateralized alpha power in schizophrenia

Deficient attention modulation of lateralized alpha power in schizophrenia

Lateralization of posterior alpha EEG reflects the distribution of spatial attention during saccadic reading

Multiple Language Use Influences Oculomotor Task Performance: Neurophysiological Evidence of a Shared Substrate between Language and Motor Control

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