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A prominent theoretical framework spanning philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience holds that selective attention penetrates early stages of perceptual processing to alter the subjective visual experience of behaviorally relevant stimuli. For example, searching for a red apple at the grocery store might make the relevant color appear brighter and more saturated compared with seeing the exact same red apple while searching for a yellow banana. In contrast, recent proposals argue that data supporting attention-related changes in appearance reflect decision- and motor-level response biases without concurrent changes in perceptual experience. Here, we tested these accounts by evaluating attentional modulations of EEG responses recorded from male and female human subjects while they compared the perceived contrast of attended and unattended visual stimuli rendered at different levels of physical contrast. We found that attention enhanced the amplitude of the P1 component, an early evoked potential measured over visual cortex. A linking model based on signal detection theory suggests that response gain modulations of the P1 component track attention-induced changes in perceived contrast as measured with behavior. In contrast, attentional cues induced changes in the baseline amplitude of posterior alpha band oscillations (∼9-12 Hz), an effect that best accounts for cue-induced response biases, particularly when no stimuli are presented or when competing stimuli are similar and decisional uncertainty is high. The observation of dissociable neural markers that are linked to changes in subjective appearance and response bias supports a more unified theoretical account and demonstrates an approach to isolate subjective aspects of selective information processing. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENTDoes attention alter visual appearance, or does it simply induce response bias? In the present study, we examined these competing accounts using EEG and linking models based on signal detection theory. We found that response gain modulations of the visually evoked P1 component best accounted for attention-induced changes in visual appearance. In contrast, cue-induced baseline shifts in alpha band activity better explained response biases. Together, these results suggest that attention concurrently impacts visual appearance and response bias, and that these processes can be experimentally isolated.
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Rapid modulation in music supports attention in listeners with attentional difficulties
Abstract Background music is widely used to sustain attention, but little is known about what musical properties aid attention. This may be due to inter-individual variability in neural responses to music. Here we find that music with amplitude modulations added at specific rates can sustain attention differentially for those with varying levels of attentional difficulty. We first tested the hypothesis that music with strong amplitude modulation would improve sustained attention, and found it did so when it occurred early in the experiment. Rapid modulations in music elicited greater activity in attentional networks in fMRI, as well as greater stimulus-brain coupling in EEG. Finally, to test the idea that specific modulation properties would differentially affect listeners based on their level of attentional difficulty, we parametrically manipulated the depth and rate of amplitude modulations inserted in otherwise-identical music, and found that beta-range modulations helped more than other modulation ranges for participants with more ADHD symptoms. Results suggest the possibility of an oscillation-based neural mechanism for targeted music to support improved cognitive performance.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1945436
- PAR ID:
- 10550384
- Publisher / Repository:
- Nature Publishing Group
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Communications Biology
- Volume:
- 7
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 2399-3642
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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