Anticipatory attention is a stable state induced by transient control mechanisms

Sean Noah; Sreenivasan Meyyappan; Mingzhou Ding; George R Mangun

doi:10.3389/fnhum.2022.965689

Anticipatory attention is a stable state induced by transient control mechanisms

Front Hum Neurosci. 2022 Jul 22:16:965689. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2022.965689. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Sean Noah^{1

2}, Sreenivasan Meyyappan¹, Mingzhou Ding³, George R Mangun^{1

4

5}

Affiliations

¹ Center for Mind and Brain, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA, United States.
² Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, United States.
³ J. Crayton Pruitt Family Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, United States.
⁴ Department of Psychology, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA, United States.
⁵ Department of Neurology, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA, United States.

Abstract

Anticipatory attention is a neurocognitive state in which attention control regions bias neural activity in sensory cortical areas to facilitate the selective processing of incoming targets. Previous electroencephalographic (EEG) studies have identified event-related potential (ERP) signatures of anticipatory attention, and implicated alpha band (8-12 Hz) EEG oscillatory activity in the selective control of neural excitability in visual cortex. However, the degree to which ERP and alpha band measures reflect related or distinct underlying neural processes remains to be further understood. To investigate this question, we analyzed EEG data from 20 human participants performing a cued object-based attention task. We used support vector machine (SVM) decoding analysis to compare the attentional time courses of ERP signals and alpha band power. We found that ERP signals encoding attentional instructions are dynamic and precede stable attention-related changes in alpha power, suggesting that ERP and alpha power reflect distinct neural processes. We proposed that the ERP patterns reflect transient attentional orienting signals originating in higher order control areas, whereas the patterns of synchronized oscillatory neural activity in the alpha band reflect a sustained attentional state. These findings support the hypothesis that anticipatory attention involves transient top-down control signals that establish more stable neural states in visual cortex, enabling selective sensory processing.

Keywords: EEG; ERP; SVM—support vector machine; alpha; attention; cue; decoding; object.