Open AccessAttentional Selection Accompanied by Eye Vergence as Revealed by Event-Related Brain Potentials
Author(s) -
María Solé Puig,
Josep Marco-Pallarés,
Laura Pérez Zapata,
Laura Puigcerver,
José Cañete,
Hans Supèr
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
plos one
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.99
H-Index - 332
ISSN - 1932-6203
DOI - 10.1371/journal.pone.0167646
Subject(s) - stimulus (psychology) , eye movement , psychology , neuroscience , sensory system , cognitive psychology , visual attention , frontal eye fields , saccade , cognition
Neural mechanisms of attention allow selective sensory information processing. Top-down deployment of visual-spatial attention is conveyed by cortical feedback connections from frontal regions to lower sensory areas modulating late stimulus responses. A recent study reported the occurrence of small eye vergence during orienting top-down attention. Here we assessed a possible link between vergence and attention by comparing visual event related potentials (vERPs) to a cue stimulus that induced attention to shift towards the target location to the vERPs to a no-cue stimulus that did not trigger orienting attention. The results replicate the findings of eye vergence responses during orienting attention and show that the strength and time of eye vergence coincide with the onset and strength of the vERPs when subjects oriented attention. Our findings therefore support the idea that eye vergence relates to and possibly has a role in attentional selection.