scholarly journals Eye Movements during Auditory Attention Predict Individual Differences in Dorsal Attention Network Activity

Author(s):  
Rodrigo M. Braga ◽  
Richard Z. Fu ◽  
Barry M. Seemungal ◽  
Richard J. S. Wise ◽  
Robert Leech
PLoS ONE ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (12) ◽  
pp. e0242985
Author(s):  
Howard Muchen Hsu ◽  
Zai-Fu Yao ◽  
Kai Hwang ◽  
Shulan Hsieh

The ability to inhibit motor response is crucial for daily activities. However, whether brain networks connecting spatially distinct brain regions can explain individual differences in motor inhibition is not known. Therefore, we took a graph-theoretic perspective to examine the relationship between the properties of topological organization in functional brain networks and motor inhibition. We analyzed data from 141 healthy adults aged 20 to 78, who underwent resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging and performed a stop-signal task along with neuropsychological assessments outside the scanner. The graph-theoretic properties of 17 functional brain networks were estimated, including within-network connectivity and between-network connectivity. We employed multiple linear regression to examine how these graph-theoretical properties were associated with motor inhibition. The results showed that between-network connectivity of the salient ventral attention network and dorsal attention network explained the highest and second highest variance of individual differences in motor inhibition. In addition, we also found those two networks span over brain regions in the frontal-cingulate-parietal network, suggesting that these network interactions are also important to motor inhibition.


2016 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy M. Jimenez ◽  
Junghee Lee ◽  
Jonathan K. Wynn ◽  
Mark S. Cohen ◽  
Stephen A. Engel ◽  
...  

2019 ◽  
Vol 122 (1) ◽  
pp. 232-240 ◽  
Author(s):  
David E. Osher ◽  
James A. Brissenden ◽  
David C. Somers

The cortical dorsal attention network (DAN) is a set of parietal and frontal regions that support a wide variety of attentionally demanding tasks. Whereas attentional deployment reliably drives DAN activity across subjects, there is a large degree of variation in the activation pattern in individual subjects. We hypothesize that a subject’s own idiosyncratic pattern of cortical DAN activity can be predicted from that subject’s own unique pattern of functional connectivity. By modeling task activation as a function of whole brain connectivity patterns, we are able to define the connectivity fingerprints for the frontal and parietal DAN, and use it to predict a subject’s characteristic DAN activation pattern with high accuracy. These predictions outperform the standard group-average benchmark and predict a subject’s own activation pattern above and beyond predictions from another subject’s connectivity pattern. Thus an individual’s distinctive connectivity pattern accounts for substantial variance in DAN functional responses. Last, we show that the set of connections that predict cortical DAN responses, the frontal and parietal DAN connectivity fingerprints, is predominantly composed of other coactive regions, including regions outside of the DAN including occipital and temporal visual cortices. These connectivity fingerprints represent defining computational characteristics of the DAN, delineating which voxels are or are not capable of exerting top-down attentional bias to other regions of the brain. NEW & NOTEWORTHY The dorsal attention network (DAN) is a set of regions in frontoparietal cortex that reliably activate during attentional tasks. We designed computational models that predict the degree of an individual’s DAN activation using their resting-state connectivity pattern alone. This uncovered the connectivity fingerprints of the DAN, which define it so well that we can predict how a voxel will respond to an attentional task given only its pattern of connectivity, with outstanding accuracy.


Cortex ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 85 ◽  
pp. 182-193 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosanna K. Olsen ◽  
Vinoja Sebanayagam ◽  
Yunjo Lee ◽  
Morris Moscovitch ◽  
Cheryl L. Grady ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Vol 226 (4) ◽  
pp. 989-1006
Author(s):  
Ilenia Salsano ◽  
Valerio Santangelo ◽  
Emiliano Macaluso

AbstractPrevious studies demonstrated that long-term memory related to object-position in natural scenes guides visuo-spatial attention during subsequent search. Memory-guided attention has been associated with the activation of memory regions (the medial-temporal cortex) and with the fronto-parietal attention network. Notably, these circuits represent external locations with different frames of reference: egocentric (i.e., eyes/head-centered) in the dorsal attention network vs. allocentric (i.e., world/scene-centered) in the medial temporal cortex. Here we used behavioral measures and fMRI to assess the contribution of egocentric and allocentric spatial information during memory-guided attention. At encoding, participants were presented with real-world scenes and asked to search for and memorize the location of a high-contrast target superimposed in half of the scenes. At retrieval, participants viewed again the same scenes, now all including a low-contrast target. In scenes that included the target at encoding, the target was presented at the same scene-location. Critically, scenes were now shown either from the same or different viewpoint compared with encoding. This resulted in a memory-by-view design (target seen/unseen x same/different view), which allowed us teasing apart the role of allocentric vs. egocentric signals during memory-guided attention. Retrieval-related results showed greater search-accuracy for seen than unseen targets, both in the same and different views, indicating that memory contributes to visual search notwithstanding perspective changes. This view-change independent effect was associated with the activation of the left lateral intra-parietal sulcus. Our results demonstrate that this parietal region mediates memory-guided attention by taking into account allocentric/scene-centered information about the objects' position in the external world.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 915
Author(s):  
Marianna Stella ◽  
Paul E. Engelhardt

In this study, we examined eye movements and comprehension in sentences containing a relative clause. To date, few studies have focused on syntactic processing in dyslexia and so one goal of the study is to contribute to this gap in the experimental literature. A second goal is to contribute to theoretical psycholinguistic debate concerning the cause and the location of the processing difficulty associated with object-relative clauses. We compared dyslexic readers (n = 50) to a group of non-dyslexic controls (n = 50). We also assessed two key individual differences variables (working memory and verbal intelligence), which have been theorised to impact reading times and comprehension of subject- and object-relative clauses. The results showed that dyslexics and controls had similar comprehension accuracy. However, reading times showed participants with dyslexia spent significantly longer reading the sentences compared to controls (i.e., a main effect of dyslexia). In general, sentence type did not interact with dyslexia status. With respect to individual differences and the theoretical debate, we found that processing difficulty between the subject and object relatives was no longer significant when individual differences in working memory were controlled. Thus, our findings support theories, which assume that working memory demands are responsible for the processing difficulty incurred by (1) individuals with dyslexia and (2) object-relative clauses as compared to subject relative clauses.


Hypertension ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 76 (5) ◽  
pp. 1480-1490 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorenzo Carnevale ◽  
Angelo Maffei ◽  
Alessandro Landolfi ◽  
Giovanni Grillea ◽  
Daniela Carnevale ◽  
...  

Hypertension is one of the main risk factors for vascular dementia and Alzheimer disease. To predict the onset of these diseases, it is necessary to develop tools to detect the early effects of vascular risk factors on the brain. Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging can investigate how the brain modulates its resting activity and analyze how hypertension impacts cerebral function. Here, we used resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging to explore brain functional-hemodynamic coupling across different regions and their connectivity in patients with hypertension, as compared to subjects with normotension. In addition, we leveraged multimodal imaging to identify the signature of hypertension injury on the brain. Our study included 37 subjects (18 normotensives and 19 hypertensives), characterized by microstructural integrity by diffusion tensor imaging and cognitive profile, who were subjected to resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging analysis. We mapped brain functional connectivity networks and evaluated the connectivity differences among regions, identifying the altered connections in patients with hypertension compared with subjects with normotension in the (1) dorsal attention network and sensorimotor network; (2) dorsal attention network and visual network; (3) dorsal attention network and frontoparietal network. Then we tested how diffusion tensor imaging fractional anisotropy of superior longitudinal fasciculus correlates with the connections between dorsal attention network and default mode network and Montreal Cognitive Assessment scores with a widespread network of functional connections. Finally, based on our correlation analysis, we applied a feature selection to highlight those most relevant to describing brain injury in patients with hypertension. Our multimodal imaging data showed that hypertensive brains present a network of functional connectivity alterations that correlate with cognitive dysfunction and microstructural integrity. Registration— URL: https://www.clinicaltrials.gov ; Unique identifier: NCT02310217.


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