Attention articles within Nature Communications

Featured

  • Article
    | Open Access

    How external stimuli capture our attention remains poorly understood. Here, the authors use a data-driven approach with human intracortical recordings to show that exogenous attention phenomena, such as inhibition of return, emerge at the intersection of visual and response signals across cortical gradients and timescales that shape the segregation of attentional events.

    • Tal Seidel Malkinson
    • , Dimitri J. Bayle
    •  & Paolo Bartolomeo
  • Article
    | Open Access

    A consistent set of brain areas is engaged across diverse cognitive tasks. Here, the authors reveal a unifying latent brain state that predicts performance across seven tasks, linking a core control network to cognitive flexibility and adaptive behaviors.

    • Weidong Cai
    • , Jalil Taghia
    •  & Vinod Menon
  • Article
    | Open Access

    The neural substrates of intra-individual variability are not well understood. Here, the authors show in macaque monkeys that response time variability is decreased by lesions to the anterior cingulate cortex and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, while it is increased by lesions to the posterior cingulate cortex and orbitofrontal cortex.

    • Farshad Alizadeh Mansouri
    • , Mark J. Buckley
    •  & Keiji Tanaka
  • Article
    | Open Access

    How salient objects in our environment grab our attention has been a matter of debate for decades. Here, the authors demonstrate that salient objects automatically capture attention, but cognitive effort can affect their potency.

    • Jacob A. Westerberg
    • , Jeffrey D. Schall
    •  & Alexander Maier
  • Article
    | Open Access

    It has been unclear whether human FEF and early visual cortex play a role in the perceptual modulations preceding saccades. Here, the authors show that V1/2 TMS reduces sensitivity at the contralateral target just before saccade onset, and rFEF+TMS enhances sensitivity where presaccadic perception is poor.

    • Nina M. Hanning
    • , Antonio Fernández
    •  & Marisa Carrasco
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Past experience with environmental regularities can influence attentional priority. Here the authors show that when observers have learned to expect information in certain locations during a visual search task, such otherwise hidden attentional biases can be visualized through neural responses evoked by the presentation of sudden task-irrelevant visual input (‘pings’).

    • Dock H. Duncan
    • , Dirk van Moorselaar
    •  & Jan Theeuwes
  • Article
    | Open Access

    People are thought to engage a retrieval brain state when they bring to mind past experiences. Here, using multivariate pattern classification analyses across experimental paradigms, the author shows that internal attention is a central process of the retrieval state.

    • Nicole M. Long
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Not much is known about how intrinsic timescales, which characterize the dynamics of endogenous fluctuations in neural activity, change during cognitive tasks. Here, the authors show that intrinsic timescales of neural activity in the primate visual cortex change during spatial attention. Experimental data were best explained by a network model in which timescales arise from spatially arranged connectivity.

    • Roxana Zeraati
    • , Yan-Liang Shi
    •  & Tatiana A. Engel
  • Article
    | Open Access

    How object salience is encoded in the cortex and basal ganglia remains incompletely understood. Here, the authors show that individual prefrontal cortex neurons are jointly sensitive to the memory of value, aversiveness, novelty, and recency of objects, while the substantia nigra reticulata filters out novelty and recency signals but amplifies value and aversive memories.

    • Ali Ghazizadeh
    •  & Okihide Hikosaka
  • Review Article
    | Open Access

    While the contribution of sharp wave ripples in memory consolidation and decision-making is established in rodent models, our understanding of their role in human memory is incomplete. Here, the authors discuss common methodological challenges in detecting, analyzing, and reporting sharp wave ripples, then they suggest practical solutions to distinguish them from other high-frequency events

    • Anli A. Liu
    • , Simon Henin
    •  & György Buzsáki
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Failing to detect relevant information has been assumed to be a consequence of misallocation of attention. Here, the authors present findings showing that optimal behavioral performance results from the absence of interference between internal neural states and attention control.

    • J. L. Amengual
    • , F. Di Bello
    •  & Suliann Ben Hamed
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Stimulus-induced conflicts impair behavior in conflict tasks resulting in a phenomenon known as the behavioral congruency effect. Here, the authors investigate the neural underpinnings of this phenomenon and report a neuronal congruency effect in macaque prefrontal cortex to explain this impairment.

    • Tao Yao
    •  & Wim Vanduffel
  • Article
    | Open Access

    In primate area LIP, target selection and the accumulation of sensory evidence are considered a single process. Here, the authors use urgent choice tasks to show that spatial selection in LIP is distinct from, and may even conflict with, evidence accumulation.

    • Joshua A. Seideman
    • , Terrence R. Stanford
    •  & Emilio Salinas
  • Article
    | Open Access

    The relative roles of visual, parietal, and frontal cortex in working memory have been actively debated. Here, the authors show that distraction impacts visual working memory representations in primary visual areas, indicating that these regions play a key role in the maintenance of working memory.

    • Grace E. Hallenbeck
    • , Thomas C. Sprague
    •  & Clayton E. Curtis
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Attentional lapses occur in many forms such as mind-wandering or mindblanking. Here the authors show different types of attentional lapse are accompanied by slow waves, neural activity that is characteristic of transitions into sleep.

    • Thomas Andrillon
    • , Angus Burns
    •  & Naotsugu Tsuchiya
  • Article
    | Open Access

    How is neural processing adjusted when people experience uncertainty about the relevance of a stimulus feature? Here, the authors provide evidence suggesting that heightened uncertainty shifts cortical networks from a rhythmic to an asynchronous (“excited”) state and that the thalamus is central for such uncertainty-related shifts.

    • Julian Q. Kosciessa
    • , Ulman Lindenberger
    •  & Douglas D. Garrett
  • Article
    | Open Access

    How intensely an individual focuses attention is a fundamental component of attention in improving behavior performance. Here, the authors isolated neuronal activity dynamics in visual cortex V4 that represents the intensive aspect of attention independent of selective attention and experimental covariates- reward expectation, motor response preparation.

    • Supriya Ghosh
    •  & John H. R. Maunsell
  • Article
    | Open Access

    This study presents an anatomical, neurophysiological and functional characterization of four distinct prefrontal populations that project to striatal and thalamic sub-regions. The authors show that each of these populations have a discrete role in the regulation of cognitive control.

    • Sybren F. de Kloet
    • , Bastiaan Bruinsma
    •  & Huibert D. Mansvelder
  • Article
    | Open Access

    People spend much of their daily lives thinking about things that are unrelated to their immediate environment. Using fMRI, Kucyi et al. show that occurrence of these “stimulus-independent” thoughts can be predicted from a complex pattern of coordinated activity between distinct parts of the brain.

    • Aaron Kucyi
    • , Michael Esterman
    •  & Susan Whitfield-Gabrieli
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Endogenous attention is known to be controlled by dorsal fronto-parietal brain areas. Here the authors identify a control attention area located in the temporal lobe, which is functionally distinct from surrounding areas, and is directly connected to parietal and frontal attentional regions.

    • Ilaria Sani
    • , Heiko Stemmann
    •  & Winrich A. Freiwald
  • Article
    | Open Access

    The study reports that implicitly learned, statistically defined chunks of abstract visual shapes elicit similar object-based perceptual effects as images of true objects with visual boundaries do. This result links the emergence of object representations to implicit statistical learning mechanisms.

    • Gábor Lengyel
    • , Márton Nagy
    •  & József Fiser
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Progress in eye movement research has been limited since existing eye trackers are expensive and do not scale. Here, the authors show that smartphone-based eye tracking achieves high accuracy comparable to state-of-the-art mobile eye trackers, replicating key findings from prior eye movement research.

    • Nachiappan Valliappan
    • , Na Dai
    •  & Vidhya Navalpakkam
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Eye movements are inhibited prior to the occurrence of predictable visual events. Here the authors show that this inhibition is also found in the auditory domain, thus revealing a multimodal perception action coupling.

    • Dekel Abeles
    • , Roy Amit
    •  & Shlomit Yuval-Greenberg
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Conscious task load modulates the unconscious processing of semantic interference between an invisible prime and a visible target in a double-Stroop paradigm, providing evidence that high-level unconscious processing requires attention.

    • Shao-Min Hung
    • , Daw-An Wu
    •  & Shinsuke Shimojo
  • Article
    | Open Access

    That attention is a rhythmic process has received abundant evidence. Here, the authors reveal the natural sampling rate of auditory and visual periodic temporal attention. Both are antagonistically modulated by overt motor activity, a result generalised in a dynamical model of coupled oscillators.

    • Arnaud Zalta
    • , Spase Petkoski
    •  & Benjamin Morillon
  • Article
    | Open Access

    The prefrontal attention spotlight dynamically explores space at 7–12 Hz, enhancing sensory encoding and behavior, in the absence of eye movements. This alpha-clocked sampling of space is under top-down control and implements an alternation in exploration and exploitation of the visual environment.

    • Corentin Gaillard
    • , Sameh Ben Hadj Hassen
    •  & Suliann Ben Hamed
  • Article
    | Open Access

    People often fail to perceive the second of two brief visual targets, a phenomenon known as the attentional blink (AB). Here the authors modelled behaviour and brain activity to show that the AB arises from short- and long-range interactions between representations of elementary visual features.

    • Matthew F. Tang
    • , Lucy Ford
    •  & Jason B. Mattingley
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Attention is known to enhance relevant information in our environment, yet its underlying neural computations remain unclear. Here, the authors provide evidence that the degree to which a neural population can normalize itself results in greater potential for attentional benefits.

    • Ilona M. Bloem
    •  & Sam Ling
  • Article
    | Open Access

    The fusiform face area and parahippocampal place area respond to face and scene stimuli respectively. Here, the authors show using fMRI that these brain areas are also preferentially activated by eye movements associated with looking at faces and scenes even when no images are shown.

    • Lihui Wang
    • , Florian Baumgartner
    •  & Stefan Pollmann
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Eye‐tracking is a valuable tool in cognitive science for measuring how attention is directed during visual scene exploration. Here, the authors introduce a new, touchscreen-based method that accomplishes the same goal via tracking finger movements.

    • Guillaume Lio
    • , Roberta Fadda
    •  & Angela Sirigu
  • Article
    | Open Access

    The neural mechanisms for concurrently attending to multiple features in the visual stimuli are not well understood. Here, the authors show that the neural representations for two overlapping stimulus features alternate with each other at a ~4 Hz rhythm that was also observed in fluctuations in the task performance.

    • Ce Mo
    • , Junshi Lu
    •  & Fang Fang
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Visual objects from similar semantic categories present activity patterns that cluster together in higher visual areas. The authors show that conscious access differs between semantic categories and is driven by category-related visual features commonly associated with processing in higher level visual areas.

    • Daniel Lindh
    • , Ilja G. Sligte
    •  & Ian Charest
  • Article
    | Open Access

    It is known that attention can modify the brain's representations of sensory stimuli to enhance features of importance. Here, the authors show that flexible readout of cortical representations is also required to explain the behavioral effects of attention.

    • Daniel Birman
    •  & Justin L. Gardner
  • Article
    | Open Access

    In order to adjust expectations efficiently, prediction errors need to be associated with the features that gave rise to the unexpected outcome. Here, the authors show that neurons in anterior fronto-striatal networks encode prediction errors that are specific to feature values of different stimulus dimensions.

    • Mariann Oemisch
    • , Stephanie Westendorff
    •  & Thilo Womelsdorf
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Our eyes constantly follow objects we see, but do they also move in synchrony with auditory inputs? Here, the authors show that eyelid movements track the temporal structure of speech and other sound sequences, which could reflect a role of motor systems in temporal attention and sequence processing.

    • Peiqing Jin
    • , Jiajie Zou
    •  & Nai Ding
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Human eye movements when viewing scenes can reflect overt spatial attention. Here, O’Connell and Chun predict human eye movement patterns from BOLD responses to natural scenes. Linking brain activity, convolutional neural network (CNN) models, and eye movement behavior, they show that brain activity patterns and CNN models share representations that guide eye movements to scenes.

    • Thomas P. O’Connell
    •  & Marvin M. Chun
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Attention affects stimulus response gain, but its impact without sensory drive is less known. Here, the authors show that attention is coded diversely in a population and is distinct between unstimulated and stimulated contexts, providing a contrast to normalized gain models of attention.

    • Adam C. Snyder
    • , Byron M. Yu
    •  & Matthew A. Smith
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Parvalbumin and somatostatin expressing interneurons mediate lateral inhibition between cortical neurons. Here the authors report the mechanisms by which acetylcholine from the basal forebrain selectively augments lateral inhibition via Martinotti cells and show that this is conserved in humans.

    • Joshua Obermayer
    • , Tim S. Heistek
    •  & Huibert D. Mansvelder