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Tracking the voluntary control of auditory spatial attention with event‐related brain potentials
Author(s) -
Störmer Viola S.,
Green Jessica J.,
McDonald John J.
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
psychophysiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.661
H-Index - 156
eISSN - 1469-8986
pISSN - 0048-5772
DOI - 10.1111/j.1469-8986.2008.00778.x
Subject(s) - psychology , scalp , parietal lobe , frontal lobe , event related potential , electroencephalography , temporal lobe , neuroscience , negativity effect , audiology , attentional control , cognitive psychology , cognition , epilepsy , anatomy , medicine
A lateralized event‐related potential (ERP) component elicited by attention‐directing cues (ADAN) has been linked to frontal‐lobe control but is often absent when spatial attention is deployed in the auditory modality. Here, we tested the hypothesis that ERP activity associated with frontal‐lobe control of auditory spatial attention is distributed bilaterally by comparing ERPs elicited by attention‐directing cues and neutral cues in a unimodal auditory task. This revealed an initial ERP positivity over the anterior scalp and a later ERP negativity over the parietal scalp. Distributed source analysis indicated that the anterior positivity was generated primarily in bilateral prefrontal cortices, whereas the more posterior negativity was generated in parietal and temporal cortices. The anterior ERP positivity likely reflects frontal‐lobe attentional control, whereas the subsequent ERP negativity likely reflects anticipatory biasing of activity in auditory cortex.