Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/21848
Title: Multivariate analysis of EEG activity indexes contingent attentional capture
Authors: Munneke, J
Fahrenfort, J
Sutterer, D
Theeuwes, J
Awh, E
Keywords: contingent capture;attentional capture;EEG;multivariate EEG analyses;forward encoding models;backward decoding models;raw EEG;alpha power
Issue Date: 12-Nov-2020
Publisher: Elsevier
Citation: NeuroImage
Abstract: Copyright © 2020 The Author(s). An extensive body of work has shown that attentional capture is contingent on the goals of the observer: Capture is strongly reduced or even eliminated when an irrelevant singleton stimulus does not match the target-defining properties (Folk et al., 1992). There has been a long-standing debate on whether attentional capture can be explained by goal-driven and/or stimulus-driven accounts. Here, we shed further light on this matter by using EEG activity (raw EEG and alpha power) to provide a time resolved index of attentional orienting towards salient stimuli, that either matched or did not match target-defining properties. A search display containing the target stimulus was preceded by a spatially uninformative singleton cue that either matched the color of the upcoming target (contingent cues), or that appeared in an irrelevant color (non-contingent cues). Multivariate analysis of raw EEG and alpha power revealed preferential tuning to the location of both contingent and non-contingent cues, with a stronger bias towards contingent than non-contingent cues. The time course of these effects, however, depended on the neural signal. Raw EEG data revealed attentional orienting towards the contingent cue early on in the trial (>156 ms), while alpha power revealed sustained spatial selection in the cued locations at a later moment in the trial (>250 ms). Moreover, while raw EEG showed stronger capture by contingent cues during this early time window, an advantage for contingent cues arose during a later time window in alpha band activity. Thus, our findings suggest that raw EEG activity and alpha band power tap into distinct neural processes that index separate aspects of covert spatial attention.
Description: Data and code availability statement: All data have been made publicly available via the Open Science Framework and can be accessed at https://osf.io/g2c5y. The used analysis code can be downloaded at https://github.com/fahrenfort/ADAM.
URI: https://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/21848
ISSN: 1053-8119
Other Identifiers: 117562
Appears in Collections:Dept of Life Sciences Research Papers

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