The effect of autonomic arousal on attentional focus

Tracy, Joseph B.; Mohamed, Feroze B.; Faro, S; Tiver, R; Pinus, Alexander B.; Bloomer, Conor; Pyrros, Ayis; Harvan, J

doi:10.1097/00001756-200012180-00027

Cited by 25 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…In line with this suggestion, the GSR and the heart rate have been shown to correlate with activity in the brainstem during arousal (Critchley et al, 2000a;Tracy et al, 2000). Also, a correlation has been shown between alert states and the activity in the brainstem during wakefulness, anesthesia, and relaxation (Fiset et al, 1999;Hofle et al, 1997;Paus, 2000;Tracy et al, 2000). Arousal is also central in nociceptive processing to initiate a rapid response in a potential life-threatening situation (Jäning, 1995).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 75%

“…Sympathetic responses such as GSR are well-established correlates of arousal (Critchley et al, 2000b(Critchley et al, , 2001aTracy et al, 2000) and depend on networks in the brainstem (Loewy, 1990;Raine et al, 1991). In line with this suggestion, the GSR and the heart rate have been shown to correlate with activity in the brainstem during arousal (Critchley et al, 2000a;Tracy et al, 2000).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 77%

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Brainstem involvement in the initial response to pain

et al. 2004

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The autonomic responses to acute pain exposure usually habituate rapidly while the subjective ratings of pain remain high for more extended periods of time. Thus, systems involved in the autonomic response to painful stimulation, for example the hypothalamus and the brainstem, would be expected to attenuate the response to pain during prolonged stimulation. This suggestion is in line with the hypothesis that the brainstem is specifically involved in the initial response to pain. To probe this hypothesis, we performed a positron emission tomography (PET) study where we scanned subjects during the first and second minute of a prolonged tonic painful cold stimulation (cold pressor test) and nonpainful cold stimulation. Galvanic skin response (GSR) was recorded during the PET scanning as an index of autonomic sympathetic response. In the main effect of pain, we observed increased activity in the thalamus bilaterally, in the contralateral insula and in the contralateral anterior cingulate cortex but no significant increases in activity in the primary or secondary somatosensory cortex. The autonomic response (GSR) decreased with stimulus duration. Concomitant with the autonomic response, increased activity was observed in brainstem and hypothalamus areas during the initial vs. the late stimulation. This effect was significantly stronger for the painful than for the cold stimulation. Activity in the brainstem showed pain-specific covariation with areas involved in pain processing, indicating an interaction between the brainstem and cortical pain networks. The findings indicate that areas in the brainstem are involved in the initial response to noxious stimulation, which is also characterized by an increased sympathetic response. D 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 75%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 77%

Brainstem involvement in the initial response to pain

et al. 2004

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“…They proposed that caffeine increases arousal (Smith and Tolla, 1998;Mikalsen et al, 2001), which led participants to narrow their focus of attention to more salient information at the expense of less salient information (e.g. Callaway and Dembo, 1958;Easterbrook, 1959;Tracy et al, 2000). In Gruber and Block's study, the nontemporal task was probably more salient than the temporal task.…”

Section: Caffeine and Time Estimationmentioning

confidence: 97%

Effects of caffeine on prospective duration judgements of various intervals depend on task difficulty

Gruber

Block

2005

Human Psychopharmacology

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The effects of caffeine on prospective duration judgements were investigated in two double-blind placebo-controlled experiments. After taking either 200 mg of caffeine or a placebo, participants performed a task that demanded considerable attention, driving a car in a simulator (Experiment 1) or a task that demanded relatively little attention, watching a videotaped scene from a driven car (Experiment 2). Each participant made duration judgements of three target intervals: 15 s, 60 s and 300 s. Actively driving participants in the caffeine condition judged it as shorter than did those in the placebo condition. Caffeine had no effect on duration judgements following passive viewing. When people must perform a relatively difficult task, caffeine causes participants to allocate relatively more of their attentional resources to the task and relatively less to duration timing. Although caffeine may increase the pacemaker rate of an internal clock (via dopamine D(1) agonism), when external events are attention-demanding, caffeine mainly influences the relative allocation of attention to external events or to time (via dopamine D(2) agonism) in cerebral areas subserving the executive control of attention.

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“…Tracy et al (2000) manipulated arousal while participants performed a letter discrimination task where the targets were presented centrally or peripherally. Brain activity was measured using fMRI and arousal was measured using EDA.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%