FMRI And ERPs Evidence For Selective Drop In Attentional

fmri and erps evidence for selective drop in attentional costs in uncertain visuospatial environments. stefano lasaponara 1,2, massimo silv

fMRI and ERPs evidence for selective drop in attentional costs in
uncertain visuospatial environments.
Stefano Lasaponara 1,2, Massimo Silvetti 1,2, Ana B.Chica 3, Francesca
Lecce 1,2, Juan Lupianez 4 and Fabrizio Doricchi 1,2.
1Dipartimento di Psicologia 39, Università degli Studi di Roma “La
Sapienza”, Roma – Italy 2 Fondazione Santa Lucia IRCCS, Roma - Italy 3
INSERM-UPMC UMR-S 975, Groupe Hospitalier Pitié-Salpêtrière, F-75013
Paris, France.4 Departamento de Psicología Experimental y Fisiología
del Comportamiento. University of Granada - Spain.
Several studies show that the reliability of endogenous spatial cues
modulates positively the reaction time advantage for targets presented
at validly cued vs. invalidly cued locations (the “validity effect”).
This would imply that with non-predictive cues, no validity effect
should be observed. However, contrary to this prediction one could
hypothesize that attentional benefits (RT advantage for validly vs
neutrally cued targets) could still be maintained with non-predictive
cues if the brain were endowed with mechanisms allowing the selective
reduction in attentional costs (RT disadvantage for invalidly vs
neutrally cued targets). Using fMRI and ERPs we have found that
relying on non-predictive endogenous cues results in abatement of
attentional costs and maintainance of benefits. The fMRI study showed
that at variance with predictive cues, no BOLD deactivation of the
right (and left) TPJ was present during the cue-period with
non-predictive cues. The ERPs study showed reduction of the EDAN wave
on occipital sites and enhancement of the frontal ADAN wave during
non-predictive cuing. In the target-period, the drop in attentional
costs was matched with the disappearance of the difference in the
amplitude of the P1 waves evoked by invalidly vs. neutrally cued
targets. Maintainance of attentional benefits with non-predictive cues
was coupled with maintainance of the difference in the amplitude of
the N1 evoked by validly vs. neutrally cued targets. These findings
demonstrate that the segregation of mechanisms regulating attentional
benefits and costs helps efficiency of orienting in “uncertain” visual
spatial contexts characterized by poor probabilistic association
between cues and targets.