Effects of visual working memory on brain information processing of irrelevant auditory stimuli

PLoS One. 2014 Feb 26;9(2):e89989. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0089989. eCollection 2014.

Abstract

Selective attention has traditionally been viewed as a sensory processing modulator that promotes cognitive processing efficiency by favoring relevant stimuli while inhibiting irrelevant stimuli. However, the cross-modal processing of irrelevant information during working memory (WM) has been rarely investigated. In this study, the modulation of irrelevant auditory information by the brain during a visual WM task was investigated. The N100 auditory evoked potential (N100-AEP) following an auditory click was used to evaluate the selective attention to auditory stimulus during WM processing and at rest. N100-AEP amplitudes were found to be significantly affected in the left-prefrontal, mid-prefrontal, right-prefrontal, left-frontal, and mid-frontal regions while performing a high WM load task. In contrast, no significant differences were found between N100-AEP amplitudes in WM states and rest states under a low WM load task in all recorded brain regions. Furthermore, no differences were found between the time latencies of N100-AEP troughs in WM states and rest states while performing either the high or low WM load task. These findings suggested that the prefrontal cortex (PFC) may integrate information from different sensory channels to protect perceptual integrity during cognitive processing.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Acoustic Stimulation*
  • Adult
  • Attention / physiology
  • Brain / physiology*
  • Cognition / physiology
  • Evoked Potentials, Auditory
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Memory, Short-Term / physiology*
  • Recognition, Psychology / physiology
  • Visual Perception / physiology*
  • Young Adult

Grants and funding

This study was supported by 973 program (2012CB825500, 2011CB707800), NSFC (31271168, 91132307/H09, 31070965) and NSFC Finnish-Chinese joint project 813111172. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.