Abstract
Virtually all behavioral and neurophysiological studies have shown that sustained (endogenous, conceptually driven) attention enhances perception. But can this enhancement be held indefinitely? We assessed the time course of attention's effects on contrast sensitivity, reasoning that if attention does indeed boost stimulus strength, the strengthened representation could result in stronger adaptation over time. We found that attention initially enhances contrast sensitivity, but that over time sustained attention can actually impair sensitivity to an attended stimulus.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Relevant articles
Open Access articles citing this article.
-
Tracking momentary fluctuations in human attention with a cognitive brain-machine interface
Communications Biology Open Access 08 December 2022
-
Does attentional suppression occur at the level of perception or decision-making? Evidence from Gaspelin et al.’s (2015) probe letter task
Psychological Research Open Access 12 September 2022
-
Periodic attention operates faster during more complex visual search
Scientific Reports Open Access 23 April 2022
Access options
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 12 print issues and online access
$189.00 per year
only $15.75 per issue
Rent or buy this article
Get just this article for as long as you need it
$39.95
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
References
Carrasco, M., Ling, S. & Read, S. Nat. Neurosci. 7, 308–313 (2004).
Liu, T., Pestilli, F. & Carrasco, M. Neuron 45, 469–477 (2005).
Ling, S. & Carrasco, M. Vision Res. 46, 1210–1220 (2006).
Dosher, B.A. & Lu, Z.L. Vision Res. 40, 1269–1292 (2000).
Pestilli, F. & Carrasco, M. Vision Res. 45, 1867–1875 (2005).
Reynolds, J.H., Pasternak, T. & Desimone, R. Neuron 26, 703–714 (2000).
Martinez-Trujillo, J. & Treue, S. Neuron 35, 365–370 (2002).
Ohzawa, I., Sclar, G. & Freeman, R.D. Nature 298, 266–268 (1982).
Langley, K. Spat. Vis. 16, 77–93 (2002).
Greenlee, M.W., Georgeson, M.A., Magnussen, S. & Harris, J.P. Vision Res. 31, 223–236 (1991).
Foley, J.M. & Boynton, G.M. Vision Res. 33, 959–980 (1993).
Movshon, J.A. & Lennie, P. Nature 278, 850–852 (1979).
Brefczynski, J.A. & DeYoe, E.A. Nat. Neurosci. 2, 370–374 (1999).
Alais, D. & Blake, R. Nat. Neurosci. 2, 1015–1018 (1999).
Lou, L. Perception 28, 519–526 (1999).
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank T. Liu and all the members of the Carrasco lab for helpful discussions. This work was funded by the US National Institutes of Health (S.L.).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
Both authors contributed equally to this project.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing financial interests.
Supplementary information
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Ling, S., Carrasco, M. When sustained attention impairs perception. Nat Neurosci 9, 1243–1245 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn1761
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nn1761
This article is cited by
-
Tracking momentary fluctuations in human attention with a cognitive brain-machine interface
Communications Biology (2022)
-
Periodic attention operates faster during more complex visual search
Scientific Reports (2022)
-
Does attentional suppression occur at the level of perception or decision-making? Evidence from Gaspelin et al.’s (2015) probe letter task
Psychological Research (2022)
-
Differential impact of endogenous and exogenous attention on activity in human visual cortex
Scientific Reports (2020)
-
How visual spatial attention alters perception
Cognitive Processing (2018)
