 |
| Research article summary (published 30 Oct 2002): |
An electrophysiological and behavioral investigation of involuntary attention towards auditory frequency, duration and intensity changes.
Full Abstract
We measured behavior and event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in 12 subjects performing on an audio-visual distraction paradigm to investigate the cerebral mechanisms of involuntary attention towards stimulus changes in the acoustic environment. Subjects classified odd/even numbers presented on a computer screen 300 ms after the occurrence of a task-irrelevant auditory stimulus, by pressing the corresponding response button. Auditory stimuli were standard tones (600 Hz, 200 ms, 85 dB; P=0.8) or deviant tones (P=0.2), these differing from the standard either in frequency (700 Hz), duration (50 ms) or intensity (79 dB), in separate blocks. In comparison to performance to visual stimuli following the standard tones, reaction time increased by 24 ms (F(1,11)=10.91, P<0.01) and hit rate decreased by 4.6% (F(1,11)=35.47, P<0.001) to visual stimuli following the deviant tones, indicating behavioral distraction. ERPs revealed the mismatch negativity (MMN) elicited to deviant tones, which was larger for the duration deviant than for the frequency and intensity deviants (F(2,22)=19.43, P<0.001, epsilon =0.83), and which had different scalp distribution for all three deviant conditions (F(16,176)=2.40, P<0.05, epsilon =0.12). As the shorter duration and softer intensity deviant tones were unlikely to engage fresh neurons responding to their specific physical features, the present results indicate that a genuine change detection mechanism is involved in triggering attention switching towards sound changes, and suggest a largely distributed neural network of the auditory cortex underlying such involuntary attention switching.
Learn Faster Today Improve your study skills
Author information
Author/s: Escera, Carles (C); Corral, Maria Jose (MJ); Yago, Elena (E);
Affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Clinical Psychobiology, University of Barcelona, P Vall d'Hebron 171, 08035, Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain. cescera(-atsign-)psi.ub.es
Journal and publication information
Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Journal: Brain research. Cognitive brain research (Brain Res Cogn Brain Res), published in Netherlands. (Language: eng)
Reference: 2002-Nov; vol 14 (issue 3) : pp 325-32
Dates: Created 2002/11/07; Completed 2003/02/07; Revised 2006/11/15;
PMID: 12421656, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)
Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.
External Links for this article (including full text providers, if available):
Click Electronic Full-text Provider Links to see options for finding the electronic full text links to this article. Note there may be a subscription or fee required for access to the full text. See our FAQ for information on finding FREE full text articles.
This article may also be located in paper journal collections available in many libraries. Use the Journal and Publication Information above to find the full article.
MeSH headings (categories)
This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.
|
Related articles
This article has not been indexed for related articles as yet, however you can still use the live related article search links below.
See a large map of 100+ related articles.