Scopolamine reduces top-down control of selective attention: An SSVEP study
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1
University of Queensland, Queensland Brain Institute, Australia
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2
Monash University, School of Psychology and Psychiatry, Australia
In everyday life we are surrounded by more information than we can process up to the level of awareness. Selective attention allows us to direct our capacity-limited resources to task-relevant stimuli whilst ignoring task-irrelevant stimuli at other locations. Previous research has shown that the cholinergic system plays an important role in mediating our ability to selectively attend to task relevant stimuli. However, it is unclear from the existing literature how the cholinergic system modulates the neural processes underlying selective attention. The present study aimed to investigate the influence of the cholinergic system on the steady-state-visual-evoked potential (SSVEP), a neural marker that can be employed to measure which spatial locations are selectively attended. Twenty-Three male participants participated in a within-subjects, double-blind, placebo-controlled design. Across two sessions participants where administered either placebo or a single dose (0.8 mg) of scopolamine, a muscarinic cholinergic antagonist, while they performed a spatial selective attention task. Selectively attending to a spatial location resulted in an increase in SSVEP amplitude compared to when that same location was unattended. However, administration of scopolamine reduced this effect, demonstrating that scopolamine impaired neural operations underlying selective attention. This study has shown for the first time the neural consequences of scopolamine administration on selective attention performance. Specifically, the results suggest that scopolamine reduces the influence of top down control of stimulus processing that occurs in the visual cortex.
Keywords:
cholinergic system,
steady-state visually evoked potential (SSVEP),
scopolamine,
Attention,
selective attention
Conference:
ACNS-2012 Australasian Cognitive Neuroscience Conference, Brisbane, Australia, 29 Nov - 2 Dec, 2012.
Presentation Type:
Poster Presentation
Topic:
Attention
Citation:
Matthews
N,
Laube
I,
Dean
A and
Bellgrove
MA
(2012). Scopolamine reduces top-down control of selective attention: An SSVEP study.
Conference Abstract:
ACNS-2012 Australasian Cognitive Neuroscience Conference.
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2012.208.00065
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Received:
14 Oct 2012;
Published Online:
07 Nov 2012.
*
Correspondence:
Dr. Natasha Matthews, University of Queensland, Queensland Brain Institute, St Lucia, Australia, natasha.leigh.matthews@gmail.com