Attention

Question 1

What is arousal?

Answer 1

the global level of alertness in an individual

Question 2

What is selective attention?

Answer 2

• the process of selecting or focusing on one or more stimuli for enhanced processing and analysis
• sensory input or internal though
• overt vs. covert attention

Question 3

What is reflexive attention?

Answer 3

• exogenously-controlled attention
• involuntary reorientation towards sudden or important event

Question 4

Reflexive/exogenously-controlled attention reaction time

Answer 4

• very fast reaction time, but very brief (if stimuli irrelevant)

Question 5

Is reflexive attention bottom-up or top-down and what does this mean?

Answer 5

• It is a bottom-up process
• meaning, sensory inputs trigger higher order processing

Question 6

Voluntary attention

Answer 6

• consciously- or endogenously- controlled attention
• attention shift comes from within because of interests, goals, etc
• allows for slower, longer-lasting, accurate attention

Question 7

Is voluntary attention top-down or bottom-up and what does this mean?

Answer 7

• voluntary attention is a top-down process
• higher order processing controls lower order processing

Question 8

Cortical areas involved in voluntary attention

What type of attention is the Dorsal frontoparietal network involved in and what parts of the brain are included?

Answer 8

• involved in voluntary attention
• includes the Intraparietal sulcus/ superior parietal lobule (IPS/SPL)
• and the frontal eye field (FEF)

Question 9

What does the Intraparietal sulcus (IPS)/superior parital lobule (SPL)do?

Answer 9

• encodes salience (priority) map that controls voluntary shifts of attention
• directs attention
• eye movement planning

part of dorsal frontoparietal network: voluntary attention

Question 10

What does the FEF do? (frontal eye field)

Answer 10

• premotor cortex
• establishes gaze in accordance with cognitive goals (top-down processes)

part of dorsal frontoparietal network: voluntary attention

Question 11

What type of attention is the temporoparietal network involved in and what parts of the brain are included?

Answer 11

• reflexive attention
• includes the temporoparietal junction and ventral frontal cortex

Question 12

What does the temporoparietal junction do?

Answer 12

• establishes gaze in accordance with characteristics of stimuli (bottom-up)
• shift happens after unexpected target onset

Question 13

What does the pulvinar do? Where is it located?

Answer 13

• in the thalamus
• orientation and shifting of attention
• isolates relevant information by filtering out sidtractors (mainly covert attention)
• mainly top-down processes

subcortical area involved in attention

Question 14

What ddoes the superior colliculus do? Where is it located?

Answer 14

• located in posterior midbrain
• implements planned eye movements
• mainly overt attention, though some role in covert attention
• top-down and bottom-up processes

subcortical areas involved in attention

Question 15

What is inattentional blindness and when can it occur?

Answer 15

• can occur in a shadowing task using two sources of visual stimuli
• subjects fail to percieve unattended stimuli (gorilla example)

Question 16

How does attention shape neuron firing?

Answer 16

• attention can cause the overall size of the receptive fields to shrink- sharpening the receptive field

Question 17

Do neurons really repsond to locus of atttention? Monkey experiment explain

Answer 17

• Action potentials were counted while attention was covertly directed at the preferred stimulus, and as expected, a robust response was recorded.
• In the second condition, the same display was presented while recording from the same neuron, but this time the monkey was instructed to direct covert attention elsewhere within the neuron’s receptive field.
• Because (1) the favored stimulus was present, (2) the same cell was being recorded, and (3) the animal’s gaze had not shifted, you might expect that the rate of firing remained robust, but that was not the result. Instead, rates of firing were significantly diminished in the second condition.
• Only the shift in attention could account for this change

Question 18

What actions are included in higher order cognition/executive function?

Answer 18

• thoughts, feelings, and choices
• direct attnetion to important stimulus/task
• formulate a plan of action
• prefrontal cortex (PFC)

Question 19

Higher order cognition/executive function

Orbitofrontal PFC

Answer 19

• located basally
• goal-directed behaviors
• signaling expected outcomes

Question 20

Higher order cognition/executive function

Dorsolateral PFC

Answer 20

• judgement
• planning
• insight
• working memory

Question 21

Why is the claustrum important?

Answer 21

• seat of consciousness?
• reciprocal connections to almost all cortical areas
• provides resilience to distractions

Question 22

What are the easy problems of consciousness?

Answer 22

• understanding how particular patterns of neural activity create specific conscious experiences

Question 23

What does it mean if something is cognitively impenetrable?

Answer 23

neural processing that can’t be simplified

Question 24

Hard problems of consciousness

Answer 24

• understanding subjective counscious experiences (ex. experience of colors)
• decision making (executive function)

Question 25

decision making study

Answer 25

• computer screen letter-pressing study
• decision making regions activated 10 seconds before conscious experience
• motor cortex activated 5 seconds before consicous experience
• participant presses button 1 second after having conscious experience of choosing the letter