Changing the Spatial Scope of Attention Alters Patterns of Neural Gain in Human Cortex

Over the last several decades, spatial attention has been shown to influence the activity of neurons in visual cortex in various ways. These conflicting observations have inspired competing models to account for the influence of attention on perception and behavior. Here, we used electroencephalography (EEG) to assess steady-state visual evoked potentials (SSVEP) in human subjects and showed that highly focused spatial attention primarily enhanced neural responses to high-contrast stimuli (response gain), whereas distributed attention primarily enhanced responses to medium-contrast stimuli (contrast gain). Together, these data suggest that different patterns of neural modulation do not reflect fundamentally different neural mechanisms, but instead reflect changes in the spatial extent of attention.

• Publication year

  2014

• Venue

  Journal of Neuroscience

• Publication date

  2014-01-01

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine, Psychology

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3943-13.2014PMID 24381272PMCID PMC3866479
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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