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Neurology of Attention
Haydon Mort
Saturday, 16 February 2008 09:37 UTC
Hi everyone. I’m not a neuroscientist but think this subjects is very cool indeed. So I have a stupid question which I hope you an help me out with.
You know when your driving (or walking or cycling) to work and when you arrive you can’t remember your journey, because you’ve done it so many times?
Question 1: Which part of the brain is responsible for putting you on autopilot and what evolutionary benefit does it carry? I imagine it has something to do with reducing energy consuming (why should it be more energy consuming anyway) top-down activity, but I need an expert explanation(s).
Question 2: The mechanism which kicks in when an anomaly is detected in your journey (e.g. an old lady steps out in front of your car) waking you up from your day dream. What exactly is happening here? I have found one reference which only tentatively explains this in terms of a threshold being crossed in the ‘ambient scanner’ triggering top-down (concious) neural activity and an involuntary reorientation of attention. But the reference is 17 years old. What is the latest?
In your answer, I would prefer some references as I like to read about this stuff. I am particularly fond of the cool names that you have for different areas of the brain like ‘superior frontal gyrus’. So please pile in the names in your answer!
I have another burning question related to my first question that I am posting in a different topic, because I think it should be discussed separately. If possible please take some time to read it.
Thanks! Haydon
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Replies
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Hi Hayadon.
I won’t be able to answer your question in any great detail as I’m not that familiar with the research area you are asking about.
All I have ever really learnt about automatic behaviour is that a large part of automatic physical behaviour is controlled by the cerebellum (latin for little brain). The cerebellum is the large bump in the brain, and sits right in the back of the head (if you put your hand on the back of your head, that is your cerebellum). This could all be wrong so I’ll let someone else answer this in better detail.
Regarding to your analogy of a lady stepping in front of a car, a good place to start is to look at the hazard perception literature. Driving is a strong experimental manipulation there and I found this study which looked somewhat interesting.
When it comes to detecting change, I know that the parietal cortex has been heavily implicated in this (and other attentional processes). One reference I found for you is:
Beck, D. M., Rees, G., Frith, C. D., & Lavie, N. (2001). Neural correlates of change detection and change blindness. Nature Nueorscience, 4, 645-650. -
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Haydon, you ask many great questions here. There are many different types of attention modulation, with studies conducted in rodents, primates, and humans, so the literature is fairly broad. However, here , here , here and here are a few recent reviews that could get you started and would be a good source of primary literature to read.
The cerebellum does operate during “automatic” behaviors, however it is mostly involved with motor control and maintenance, not necessarily considered in the classic “top-down” control of operations. That executive function is usually reserved for the prefrontal cortex.
Using your example, your cerebellum is likely maintaining the “driving” program, until some portion of sensory cortex detects a change (which part depends on whether the interruption was visual, auditory, etc…), relaying that information to executive and motor areas, which then likely trigger a command to alter the motor program. Here, the cerebellum definitely participates again, but only after much of the processing and decision-making has occurred elsewhere.
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Hi Noah,
Thanks for the great articles. I had not seen them yet! I’ll read them slowly (being a geologist!) and get back to you if I have any other questions. I would be really interested in your opinions regarding my other discussion ‘Attention and the media’ as I have only one response so far.
Thanks again!
Haydon
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