Electrical responses reveal the temporal dynamics of brain events during involuntary attention switching

Abstract

Surviving in the natural environment requires the rapid switching of attention among potentially relevant stimuli. We studied electrophysiologically the involuntary switching time in humans performing a task designed to study brain mechanisms of involuntary attention and distraction (C. Escera et al., 1998, J. Cogn. Neurosci., 10, 590-604). Ten subjects were instructed to discriminate visual stimuli preceded by a task-irrelevant sound, this being either a repetitive tone (P = 0.8) or a distracting sound, i.e. a slightly higher deviant tone (P = 0.1) or an environmental novel sound (P = 0.1). In different conditions, the sounds preceded the visual stimuli by 245 or 355 ms. Deviant tones and novel sounds prolonged reaction times significantly to subsequent visual stimuli by 7.4 (P < 0.02) and 15.2 ms (P < 0.003), respectively. In addition to a mismatch negativity (MMN) and a positive-polarity, 320-ms latency, P3a event-related potential associated, respectively, with detection of the distracting sound and the subsequent orienting of attention to it, a late frontal negative deflection was observed in distracting trials. The peak latency of this brain response from sound onset was 580 ms in the 245-ms condition and 115 ms longer in the 355-ms condition (P < 0.001), peaking consequently at 340 ms from visual stimulus onset, irrespective of the onset of the distracting sound. We suggest that this late frontal negative response may signal over the scalp the process of reallocating attention back to the original task after momentary distraction, and therefore that recovering from distraction may take a similar shifting time as orienting attention involuntarily towards unexpected novelty.

Preparation interval and cue utilization in the prevention of distraction

“…The same pattern of results was found in a similar arrangement with auditory distracters and visual task-relevant stimuli (e.g. Escera et al, 1998;Escera, Yago, Alho, 2001;Yago, Corral, Escera, 2001). These ERPs are usually interpreted in terms of three distraction-related processing stages.…”

Exploiting temporal predictability: Event-related potential correlates of task-supportive temporal cue processing in auditory distraction

“…; Berti and Schröger, 2003;Escera et al, 1998;Escera et al, 2000;Escera, Yago and Alho, 2001;Polo et al, 2003;Roeber, Berti and Schröger, 2003;Roeber, Widmann and Schröger, 2003;Wolff, 1998a, 1998b) showed a consistent pattern of results. Response times in distracter trials were longer than in nondistracter trials, and more mistakes were made.…”

Knowledge of sequence structure prevents auditory distraction: An ERP study

“…P3a is generally assumed to reflect involuntary attention switching (Friedman et al, 2001;Polich, 2007), while RON is theorised to reflect the reorientation of attention to the original task (Schröger and Wolff, 1998a;Sussman et al, 2003). Similar results were found in auditory-visual paradigms in which targets were visual stimuli (e. g. odd or even numbers) and the distractors were sounds (Escera et al, 1998(Escera et al, , 2000(Escera et al, , 2001. Although the early studies using either auditory (Berti and Schröger, 2003;Schröger and Wolff, 1998a;Schröger and Wolff, 1998b) or auditory-visual (Escera et al, 1998(Escera et al, , 2000(Escera et al, , 2001 paradigms consistently found prolonged response times (RTs) and decreased accuracy, recent studies found abolished or even reversed behavioral effects (Li et al, 2013;Parmentier et al, 2010;SanMiguel, et al, 2010a;2010b;Wetzel et al, 2012).…”