Independent effects of motivation and spatial attention in the human visual cortex

Abstract

Motivation and attention constitute major determinants of human perception and action. Nonetheless, it remains a matter of debate whether motivation effects on the visual cortex depend on the spatial attention system, or rely on independent pathways. This study investigated the impact of motivation and spatial attention on the activity of the human primary and extrastriate visual cortex by employing a factorial manipulation of the two factors in a cued pattern discrimination task. During stimulus presentation, we recorded event-related potentials and pupillary responses. Motivational relevance increased the amplitudes of the C1 component at ∼70 ms after stimulus onset. This modulation occurred independently of spatial attention effects, which were evident at the P1 level. Furthermore, motivation and spatial attention had independent effects on preparatory activation as measured by the contingent negative variation; and pupil data showed increased activation in response to incentive targets. Taken together, these findings suggest independent pathways for the influence of motivation and spatial attention on the activity of the human visual cortex.

Spatio-Temporal Pattern of Appraising Social and Emotional Relevance: Evidence from Event-Related Brain Potentials

“…Not much is known, however, about the temporal unfolding of neural activity underlying social (versus nonsocial) information processing, and it remains largely unresolved how social content may interact with other stimulus dimensions during stimulus processing, particularly with emotional content in terms of intrinsic pleasantness / hedonic valence. Here, we extend previous EEG data (Bayer et al, 2017;Okruszek et al, 2016) by showing that social content impacts very early stages of stimulus processing, reflected in modulations of the P1 and subsequent ERP components of short latencies. Social content therefore likely represents a unique stimulus dimension that is appraised during one of the first of a series of relevance checks.…”

“…Such early social relevance effect in terms of a social versus nonsocial activation difference during complex visual scene processing is corroborated by a recent study using negative versus neutral written sentences as stimuli, and manipulating the social content dimension by means of social closeness (i.e. whether the sen-tences referred to participants' significant others or to unknown agents) (Bayer et al, 2017). The authors also report early social content effects in ERPs in the P1 component (from 73 to 120 ms), and this again irrespective of the sentences' valence.…”

“…The two so far available EEG studies that directly manipulated social relevance (Bayer et al, 2017;Okruszek et al, 2016) reported an effect of social content, but neither main effects of emotional valence nor a social by emotional content interaction at the P1 component. Importantly, however, both studies only included negative and neutral stimulus materials.…”

“…Complementing these findings, there is growing evidence indicating prioritized processing of emotionally salient stimuli to start already at early sensory stages. Several studies demonstrated the amplitudes of the visual C1 (peaking around 80 ms) and P1 (peaking around 100 ms) components to be enhanced for emotional compared to neutral stimuli (Batty & Taylor, 2003;Brosch, Sander, Pourtois, & Scherer, 2008;Holmes et al, 2009;Ortigue et al, 2004;Pourtois, Grandjean, Sander, & Vuilleumier, 2004;Stolarova, Keil, & Moratti, 2006;Rossi et al, 2017;Rellecke et al, 2012).…”

No evidence that predictions and attention modulate the first feedforward sweep of cortical information processing

“…In the domain of visuospatial attention, the majority of human studies have found no evidence for the notion that attention can modulate the first feedforward sweep of activation, as reflected in the amplitude of the earliest event-related potential (ERP), the C1 (Baumgartner, Graulty, Hillyard, & Pitts, 2018;Bayer et al, 2017;Di Russo et al, 2012;Di Russo, Martinez, & Hillyard, 2003;Martinez et al, 2001;Martínez et al, 1999;Noesselt et al, 2002). This component peaks before 100ms and flips in polarity dependent on whether the stimulus is presented in the upper or lower visual field, suggesting strong contributions of V1 generators (Di Russo et al, 2003;Kelly, Vanegas, Schroeder, & Lalor, 2013).…”