Spatial attention triggered by eye gaze increases and speeds up early visual activity.
What are the neuronal correlates of reflexive shifts of attention triggered by eye gaze direction? Event related potentials (ERPs) were measured on 14 subjects performing a spatial attention task where eye gaze direction of a face cued the location of a forthcoming target. Subjects were faster in detecting a validly cued target, i.e. one appearing at the location the eye was gazing at, compared to invalidly cued targets, despite the non-predictive value of the eye cues. ERP results showed an enhanced and earlier occipito-parietal P1 and N1 for valid trials, demonstrating the early modulation of visual input by attentional allocation. These findings provide the first evidence that social attention can rapidly modify the processing of visual information in extrastriate cortex.
Schuller
A M
AM
Unite de Neuropsychologie Cognitive et Laboratoire de Neurophysiologie, Universite Catholique de Louvain, 10 Place du Cardinal Mercier, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.
Rossion
B
B
D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D005074:Evoked Potentials, Visual / Q000502:physiology; D005145:Face; D005260:Female; D005403:Fixation, Ocular / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D012919:Social Behavior; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D014793:Visual Cortex / Q000502:physiology