Two dominant brain states reflect optimal and suboptimal attention

Yamashita, A.; Rothlein, David; Kucyi, Aaron; Valera, Eve M.; Esterman, Michael

doi:10.1101/2020.01.31.928523

Cited by 5 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 55 publications

(105 reference statements)

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“…Historically, the majority of research on sustained attention has studied attention to external stimuli during psychological tasks requiring top-down attentional control and cognitive effort. 5,[60][61][62] Complementary work has described states of attention associated with less subjective effort, such as flow states of complete absorption in an activity, 8 in-the-zone moments of optimal task performance, [63][64][65][66] and soft fascination to natural environments or aesthetic pieces of art. 67,68 Recent work has also characterized stimulus-independent internal attention and mind wandering.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural signatures of attentional engagement during narratives and its consequences for event memory

Song

Finn

Rosenberg

2020

Preprint

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As we comprehend narratives, our attentional engagement fluctuates over time. Despite theoretical conceptions of narrative engagement as emotion-laden attention, little empirical work has characterized the cognitive and neural processes that comprise subjective engagement in naturalistic contexts or its consequences for memory. Here, we relate fluctuations in narrative engagement to patterns of brain coactivation, and test whether neural signatures of engagement predict later recall. In behavioral studies, participants continuously rated how engaged they were as they watched a television episode or listened to a story. Self-reported engagement was synchronized across individuals and driven by the emotional content of the narratives. During fMRI, we observed highly synchronized activity in the default mode network when people were, on average, more engaged in the same narratives. Models based on time-varying whole-brain functional connectivity predicted evolving states of engagement across participants and even across different datasets. The same functional connections also predicted post-scan event recall, suggesting that engagement during encoding impacts subsequent memory. Finally, group-average engagement was related to fluctuations of an independent functional connectivity index of sustained attention. Together, our findings characterize the neural signatures of engagement dynamics and elucidate relationships between narrative engagement, sustained attention, and event memory.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural signatures of attentional engagement during narratives and its consequences for event memory

Song

Finn

Rosenberg

2020

Preprint

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“…Contrary to expectations, we did not observe any increase in DMN activity during mind wandering. Although this finding seems counterintuitive, previous studies have reported a similar association between the recruitment of DMN regions and optimized behavior ( "in-the-zone "), whereas suboptimal behavioral performance ( "out-the-zone ") was instead associated with DAN activation ( Esterman et al, 2014 ;Kucyi et al, 2017 ;Yamashita et al, 2020 ). Although speculative, together these findings may point to DMN activity during task-focused attention as representing a weaker engagement in goal-directed behavior or attentional stability needed to accurately perform the task.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 72%

Probing the neural signature of mind wandering with simultaneous fMRI-EEG and pupillometry

Groot¹,

Boayue²,

Csifcsák³

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Mind wandering reflects the shift in attentional focus from task-related cognition driven by external stimuli toward self-generated and internally-oriented thought processes. Although such task-unrelated thoughts (TUTs) are pervasive and detrimental to task performance, their underlying neural mechanisms are only modestly understood. To investigate TUTs with high spatial and temporal precision, we simultaneously measured fMRI, EEG, and pupillometry in healthy adults while they performed a sustained attention task with experience sampling probes. Features of interest were extracted from each modality at the single-trial level and fed to a support vector machine that was trained on the probe responses. Compared to task-focused attention, the neural signature of TUTs was characterized by weaker activity in the default mode network but elevated activity in its anticorrelated network, stronger functional coupling between these networks, widespread increase in alpha, theta, delta, but not beta, frequency power, predominantly reduced amplitudes of late, but not early, event-related potentials, and larger baseline pupil size. Particularly, information contained in dynamic interactions between large-scale cortical networks was predictive of transient changes in attentional focus above other modalities. Together, our results provide insight into the spatiotemporal dynamics of TUTs and the neural markers that may facilitate their detection.

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“…In conclusion, state IV was a strong state with the highest network integration and segregation; state III was a sparse state with the least segregation ability (Wang et al, 2020). The degree of network integration and segregation of states I and II were between states III and IV; hence, we refer to states I and II as suboptimal states based on the topological properties, showing the network's redundancy (Yamashita et al, 2021).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 88%

Suboptimal states and frontoparietal network-centered incomplete compensation revealed by dynamic functional network connectivity in patients with post-stroke cognitive impairment

Rao

Wang

et al. 2022

Front. Aging Neurosci.

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BackgroundNeural reorganization occurs after a stroke, and dynamic functional network connectivity (dFNC) pattern is associated with cognition. We hypothesized that dFNC alterations resulted from neural reorganization in post-stroke cognitive impairment (PSCI) patients, and specific dFNC patterns characterized different pathological types of PSCI.MethodsResting-state fMRI data were collected from 16 PSCI patients with hemorrhagic stroke (hPSCI group), 21 PSCI patients with ischemic stroke (iPSCI group), and 21 healthy controls (HC). We performed the dFNC analysis for the dynamic connectivity states, together with their topological and temporal features.ResultsWe identified 10 resting-state networks (RSNs), and the dFNCs could be clustered into four reoccurring states (modular, regional, sparse, and strong). Compared with HC, the hPSCI and iPSCI patients showed lower standard deviation (SD) and coefficient of variation (CV) in the regional and modular states, respectively (p < 0.05). Reduced connectivities within the primary network (visual, auditory, and sensorimotor networks) and between the primary and high-order cognitive control domains were observed (p < 0.01).ConclusionThe transition trend to suboptimal states may play a compensatory role in patients with PSCI through redundancy networks. The reduced exploratory capacity (SD and CV) in different suboptimal states characterized cognitive impairment and pathological types of PSCI. The functional disconnection between the primary and high-order cognitive control network and the frontoparietal network centered (FPN-centered) incomplete compensation may be the pathological mechanism of PSCI. These results emphasize the flexibility of neural reorganization during self-repair.

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Two dominant brain states reflect optimal and suboptimal attention

Abstract: 2Attention is not constant but fluctuates from moment to moment. Previous studies 1 3 dichotomized these fluctuations into optimal and suboptimal states based on behavioral 1 4 performance and investigated the difference in brain activity between these states. Although 1 5

Cited by 5 publications

References 55 publications

Neural signatures of attentional engagement during narratives and its consequences for event memory

Neural signatures of attentional engagement during narratives and its consequences for event memory

Probing the neural signature of mind wandering with simultaneous fMRI-EEG and pupillometry

Suboptimal states and frontoparietal network-centered incomplete compensation revealed by dynamic functional network connectivity in patients with post-stroke cognitive impairment

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