Attentional Selection Accompanied by Eye Vergence as Revealed by Event-Related Brain Potentials

Neural mechanisms of attention allow selective sensory information processing. Top-down deployment of visual-spatial attention is conveyed by cortical feedback connections from frontal regions to lower sensory areas modulating late stimulus responses. A recent study reported the occurrence of small...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Sole Puig, Maria, Marco-Pallarés, Josep|||0000-0001-9175-1480, Perez Zapata, Laura, Puigcerver, Laura, Cañete-Crespillo, Josep, Supèr, Hans|||0000-0001-9328-0096
Format: article
Publication Date:2016
Country:España
Institution:Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Repository:Dipòsit Digital de Documents de la UAB
Language:English
OAI Identifier:oai:ddd.uab.cat:174690
Online Access:https://ddd.uab.cat/record/174690
https://dx.doi.org/urn:doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0167646
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:Atenció
Attentional selection
Eye vergence
Description
Summary:Neural mechanisms of attention allow selective sensory information processing. Top-down deployment of visual-spatial attention is conveyed by cortical feedback connections from frontal regions to lower sensory areas modulating late stimulus responses. A recent study reported the occurrence of small eye vergence during orienting top-down attention. Here we assessed a possible link between vergence and attention by comparing visual event related potentials (vERPs) to a cue stimulus that induced attention to shift towards the target location to the vERPs to a no-cue stimulus that did not trigger orienting attention. The results replicate the findings of eye vergence responses during orienting attention and show that the strength and time of eye vergence coincide with the onset and strength of the vERPs when subjects oriented attention. Our findings therefore support the idea that eye vergence relates to and possibly has a role in attentional selection.