Cortical regulation of selective attention in man. A regional cerebral blood flow study.

Bach Speaks: A Cortical “Language-Network” Serves the Processing of Music

“…The different activation levels correspond to the saliency and to the task demands of the three conditions: subjects had to respond to the deviant instruments, to attend the clusters, and to ignore the modulating sequences. Jäncke et al (1999) showed that auditory simuli elicit the strongest response when they are to be detected (as the deviant instruments in the present study), followed stimuli which are to be attended but do not require a response (as the clusters); the weakest activation is elicited by stimuli which are to be ignored (as the modulations; for similar findings see, e.g., Roland, 1982;Hsiao et al, 1993). Correspondingly, due to the task demands the head of the caudate nucleus was possibly activated only during the processing of deviant instruments and clusters: the head of the caudate nucleus (in parallel with the thalamus) has been reported to be activated when task-relevant auditory events occur within a stream of complex auditory information (e.g., sentences; cf.…”

The cost of expecting events in the wrong sensory modality

“…The present conclusion that shifting attention from the tactile modality (both exogenously and endogenously) is particularly difficult may relate to Roland's (1982Roland's ( , p. 1068 PET finding that shifts of attention away from the tactile modality produce qualitatively different changes in the pattern of regional cerebral blood flow than those seen when shifting attention away from audition or vision (the latter reduced activity in appropriate unimodal cortices, whereas the former did not). Moreover, Eimer and Driver (2000) recently found with event-related potentials (ERPs) that modality selection behaves uniquely for touch, in that only touch can be spatially decoupled from spatial attention in the other two modalities when it is task irrelevant.…”

“…However, Spence and Driver (1997) highlighted another potential problem with most previous modalitycuing studies (e.g., Boulter, 1977;Gescheider et al, 1975;Klein, 1977;Posner et al, 1976;Post & Chapman, 1991;Roland, 1982): Targets in the various modalities were presented from different spatial locations. In Klein's study, auditory targets were presented over headphones, visual targets from a cathode-ray tube in front of participants, and tactile-kinesthetic stimuli to their right forefinger (which was moved to the left or right by a servo motor).…”

Focal visual attention produces illusory temporal order and motion sensation

“…The distributed nature of attentional mechanisms was indicated by regional cerebral blood flow studies (Roland, 1982). Corbetta, Miezin, Dobmeyer, Shulman and Petersen (199 1) using positron emission tomography (PET), demonstrated that attention-induced activation was observed at a whole variety of cortical as well as subcortical areas, but the activation pattern varies depending on the nature of task demands.…”

“…Corbetta, Miezin, Dobmeyer, Shulman and Petersen (199 1) using positron emission tomography (PET), demonstrated that attention-induced activation was observed at a whole variety of cortical as well as subcortical areas, but the activation pattern varies depending on the nature of task demands. Neurophysiologically, the effect of attention is demonstrated as the enhancement or suppression of sensory responses, but the nature of the modulatory processes is different among different brain areas (Goldberg & Wurtz, 1972;Roland, 1982;Hikosaka & Wurtz, 1983;Fischer & Both, 1985;Moran & Desimone, 1985;Richmond dz Sato, 1987;Haenny, Maunsell & Schiller, 1988;Sato, 1988;Spitzer, Desimone & Moran, 1988;Hikosaka et al, 1989;Fuster, 1990). …”