Disentangling expectation and attention in early visual cortex
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1
Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behavior, Netherlands
Attention and expectation are conceptually distinct: attention is a process whereby relevant aspects are enhanced, whereas expectation relates to how likely certain aspects of a stimulus are. Yet, these concepts are often conflated in empirical studies. For example, attention is typically investigated by manipulating participants’ expectation about upcoming stimuli (“Posner” cueing tasks). In this study we attempt to disentangle the effects of expectation and attention on stimulus processing, by manipulating spatial attention and expectation independently, and probing their respective effects on the neural responses evoked by visual stimuli using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Results revealed that expectation had opposite effects on stimulus processing in early visual cortex depending on the focus of attention. When stimuli were attended, the neural response in early visual cortex was larger and earlier for expected than unexpected stimuli, consistent with findings from the attention literature in which attention is manipulated by expectation cues. However, an opposite pattern of results was observed when stimuli were task-irrelevant and not attended: a reduced neural response to expected stimuli compared to unexpected stimuli. This reduced neural response to expected stimuli may be caused by a reduction in ‘surprise’ associated with the stimulus. These opposite effects of expectation on neural responses in relevant sensory areas, contingent on attention, may explain the seemingly contradictory findings in the literature regarding the effects of expectation.
Keywords:
Attention,
expectation,
fMRI
Conference:
XI International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON XI), Palma, Mallorca, Spain, 25 Sep - 29 Sep, 2011.
Presentation Type:
Symposium: Oral Presentation
Topic:
Symposium 6: Expectation and attention in visual cognition: neural and computational approaches
Citation:
De Lange
FP
(2011). Disentangling expectation and attention in early visual cortex.
Conference Abstract:
XI International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON XI).
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2011.207.00038
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Received:
09 Nov 2011;
Published Online:
15 Nov 2011.
*
Correspondence:
Dr. Floris P De Lange, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behavior, Nijmegen, Netherlands, floris.delange@donders.ru.nl