Becker, S. I. | bioRxiv Science

bioRxiv2023

Faces capture spatial attention only when we want them to: an inattentional blindness EEG study

Previous research on emotional face processing has shown that emotional faces such as fearful faces may be processed without visual awareness. However, evidence for nonconscious attention capture by fearful faces is limited. In fact, studies using sensory manipulation of awareness (e.g., backward masking paradigms) have shown that fearful faces do not attract attention during subliminal viewings nor when they were task-irrelevant. Here, we used a three-phase inattentional blindness paradigm and electroencephalography to examine whether faces (fearful and neutral) capture attention under different conditions of awareness and task-relevancy. We found that the electrophysiological marker for attention capture, the N2-posterior-contralateral (N2pc), was elicited by face stimuli only when participants were aware of the faces and when they were task-relevant (phase 3). When participants were unaware of the presence of faces (phase 1) or when the faces were irrelevant to the task (phase 2), no N2pc was observed. Together with our previous work, we concluded that fearful faces, or faces in general, do not attract attention unless we want them to.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2023

Attentional capture by fearful faces requires consciousness and is modulated by task-relevancy: a dot-probe EEG study

In the current EEG study, we used a dot-probe task in conjunction with backward masking to examine the neural activity underlying awareness and spatial processing of fearful faces and the neural processes for subsequent cued spatial targets. We presented face images under different viewing conditions (subliminal and supraliminal) and manipulated the relation between a fearful face in the pair and a subsequent target. Through both mass univariate analysis and multivariate pattern analysis, we found that fearful faces can be processed to an extent where they attract spatial attention only when they are presented supraliminally and when they are task-relevant. The spatial attention capture by fearful faces also modulated the processing of subsequent lateralised targets that were spatially congruent with the fearful face, in both behavioural and neural data. There was no evidence for nonconscious processing of the fearful faces in the current paradigm. We conclude that spatial attentional capture by fearful faces requires visual awareness and it is modulated by top-down task demands.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2018

Flexible information coding in frontoparietal cortex across the functional stages of cognitive processing.

Neural activity in frontoparietal cortex shows overlap across cognitive domains and has been proposed to reflect flexible information processing according to current task demands (Dosenbach et al., 2007; Duncan, 2001). However, a strong assertion of flexibility requires investigating activity across stages of cognitive processing. The current study assessed neural activity in Multiple Demand (MD) regions across the stages of processing that form the core of long-standing cognitive models (Welford, 1952). Specifically, many complex tasks share a comparable structure of subsequent operations: target selection, stimulus-response (SR) mapping, and response execution. We independently manipulated the difficulty of target selection and SR mapping in identical stimulus displays and assessed changes in frontoparietal activity with increased demands in either stage. The results confirmed flexibility in MD regions, with enhanced information representation during difficult target selection as well as SR mapping. Additionally, anterior insula (AI) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) showed preferential representation of SR stage information, whereas the medial frontal gyrus (MFG) and inferior parietal sulcus (IPS) showed preferential representation of target selection-stage information. Together these results suggest that MD regions dynamically alter the information they represent with changing task demands. This is the first study to demonstrate that MD regions support flexible goal-directed cognition across multiple processing stages. At the same time we show a preference for the representation of information from a specific processing stage in a subset of MD regions.\n\nSignificance StatementGoal-directed cognition in complex tasks is critical to key life outcomes including longevity and academic performance. Nevertheless, the mechanisms underlying cognition in complex tasks are not well understood. Distinct neural networks are critical to the navigation of specific cognitive domains (e.g. attention), but frontoparietal activity shows cross-domain and -task overlap and supports flexible representation of goal-critical information. This study links flexible frontoparietal processing to longstanding models of meta-cognition that propose a unifying structure of operations underlying most tasks: target selection, SR mapping, and response execution. Our results demonstrate that flexible information representation in frontoparietal cortex is not limited to the SR mapping stage, but applies across the functional stages of cognitive processing, thus maximizing neural efficiency and supporting flexible cognition.

neuroscience↗