Use of Multichannel Near Infrared Spectroscopy to Study Relationships Between Brain Regions and Neurocognitive Tasks of Selective/Divided Attention and 2-Back Working Memory

Abstract

While dichotic listening (DL) was originally intended to measure bottom-up selective attention, it has also become a tool for measuring top-down selective attention. This study investigated the brain regions related to top-down selective and divided attention DL tasks and a 2-back task using alphanumeric and Japanese numeric sounds. Thirty-six healthy participants underwent near-infrared spectroscopy scanning while performing a top-down selective attentional DL task, a top-down divided attentional DL task, and a 2-back task. Pearson's correlations were calculated to show relationships between oxy-Hb concentration in each brain region and the score of each cognitive task. Different brain regions were activated during the DL and 2-back tasks. Brain regions activated in the top-down selective attention DL task were the left inferior prefrontal gyrus and left pars opercularis. The left temporopolar area was activated in the top-down divided attention DL task, and the left frontopolar area and left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex were activated in the 2-back task. As further evidence for the finding that each task measured different cognitive and brain area functions, neither the percentages of correct answers for the three tasks nor the response times for the selective attentional task and the divided attentional task were correlated to one another. Thus, the DL and 2-back tasks used in this study can assess multiple areas of cognitive, brain-related dysfunction to explore their relationship to different psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders.

Relationships Between Cortically Mediated Attentional Dysfunction and Social Anxiety, Self-Focused Attention, and External Attention Bias

“…The present study aimed to use the DL task to examine relationships between self-reported social anxiety and brain activity, based on top-down attentional control functioning (Tomita et al., 2017). We also investigated the relationship between social situation-dependent internal/external attention biases (self-reported self-focused attention and external attention bias) and social situation-independent attentional control functions.…”

“…All participants were Japanese, and no participants had any diagnosed psychological disorders including SAD, hearing problems, neurological or cardiovascular illnesses, poor physical conditions, lack of sleep, and medication use within 24 hours; and none had drunk alcohol within 12 hours of beginning of the experiment. The participants were the same as those in a previously published study by Tomita et al (2017). This study received ethical approval from the university's ethics committee.…”

“…We used the virtual registration method to estimate the cortical localization of each channel (Tsuzuki et al, 2007;Yokoyama et al, 2015), which enabled the probabilistic registration of NIRS data onto the Montreal Neurological Institute coordinate space. We set the brain activity regions of interest (ROIs) based on the findings of Tomita et al (2017) where the RTs for the selective attentional task negatively correlated with Áoxy-Hb in the left inferior prefrontal gyrus (CH50: r ¼ À.40, p < .05); the PCA positively correlated with the left pars opercularis (CH30: r ¼ .37, p < .05); the RTs for the divided attentional task did not correlate with any region of brain activity; and PCA correlated positively with the left temporopolar area (CH51: r ¼ .36, p < .05). Thus, the three ROIs were placed over the left temporopolar area (CH51), the pars opercularis (CH30), and the left inferior prefrontal gyrus (CH50).…”

“…Third, while the functional brain activity of top-down selective and divided attention during DL tasks may overlap with working memory (WM) tasks such as the n-back task that has been found useful for training attentional control functions (Sari, Koster, Pourtois, & Derakshan, 2016), to the best of our knowledge, no study has simultaneously investigated differences in brain activity associated with both DL and WM tasks. In their elucidation of brain regions related to top-down selective and divided attention in the DL and 2-back WM tasks using near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS), Tomita, Imai, Kanayama, Kawashima, and Kumano (2017) found that the brain regions active in the top-down selective attention DL task-the left inferior prefrontal gyrus and the left pars opercularis-were different from those activated in the top-down divided attention DL task-the left temporopolar area. Moreover, the regions activated in the 2-back task were the left frontopolar area and the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.…”

“…The purpose of the present study was to use the DL task to examine the relationships between the degree of the research participants' social anxiety and their cortically mediated top-down attentional control functions (Tomita et al, 2017). To the best of our knowledge, no prior study has simultaneously investigated the relationship between social anxiety and top-down selective/ divided attentional control functions while referring to relevant underlying brain activity.…”