Attention periodically samples competing stimuli during binocular rivalry

  1. Matthew J Davidson  Is a corresponding author
  2. David Alais
  3. Jeroen JA van Boxtel  Is a corresponding author
  4. Naotsugu Tsuchiya  Is a corresponding author
  1. Monash University, Australia
  2. The University of Sydney, Australia

Abstract

The attentional sampling hypothesis suggests that attention rhythmically enhances sensory processing when attending to a single (~8 Hz), or multiple (~4 Hz) objects. Here we investigated whether attention samples sensory representations that are not part of the conscious percept during binocular rivalry. When crossmodally cued toward a conscious image, subsequent changes in consciousness occurred at ~8 Hz, consistent with rates of undivided attentional sampling. However, when attention was cued toward the suppressed image, changes in consciousness slowed to ~3.5 Hz, indicating the division of attention away from the conscious visual image. In the electroencephalogram, we found that at attentional sampling frequencies, the strength of inter-trial phase-coherence over fronto-temporal and parieto-occipital regions correlated with changes in perception. When cues were not task-relevant, these effects disappeared, confirming that perceptual changes were dependent upon the allocation of attention, and that attention can flexibly sample away from a conscious image in a task-dependent manner.

Data availability

The raw data in this study are available via the Monash University Figshare repository (https://figshare.com/projects/Crossmodal_binocular_rivalry_attention_sampling_project/56252). Analysis code is available via GitHub (https://github.com/Davidson-MJ/BRproject-attentionsampling).

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Matthew J Davidson

    School of Psychological Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, Nursing, and Health Sciences, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
    For correspondence
    mjd070@gmail.com
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-2088-040X
  2. David Alais

    School of Psychology, The University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  3. Jeroen JA van Boxtel

    School of Psychological Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, Nursing, and Health Sciences, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
    For correspondence
    jeroen.van.boxtel@monash.edu
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-2643-0474
  4. Naotsugu Tsuchiya

    School of Psychological Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, Nursing, and Health Sciences, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
    For correspondence
    Naotsugu.Tsuchiya@monash.edu
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

Funding

Australian Research Council (FT120100619)

  • Naotsugu Tsuchiya

Australian Research Council (DP130100194)

  • Naotsugu Tsuchiya

Australian Research Council (DP150101731)

  • David Alais

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Ethics

Human subjects: This research involved human subjects. Participants gave their written informed consent to participate in the experiment. Experimental procedures were approved by the Monash University Human Research Ethics Committee (CF12/2542 - 2012001375)

Copyright

© 2018, Davidson et al.

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.

Metrics

  • 2,868
    views
  • 416
    downloads
  • 22
    citations

Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.

Download links

A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.

Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)

Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)

Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)

  1. Matthew J Davidson
  2. David Alais
  3. Jeroen JA van Boxtel
  4. Naotsugu Tsuchiya
(2018)
Attention periodically samples competing stimuli during binocular rivalry
eLife 7:e40868.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.40868

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.40868

Further reading

    1. Neuroscience
    Hannah Bos, Christoph Miehl ... Brent Doiron
    Research Article

    Synaptic inhibition is the mechanistic backbone of a suite of cortical functions, not the least of which are maintaining network stability and modulating neuronal gain. In cortical models with a single inhibitory neuron class, network stabilization and gain control work in opposition to one another – meaning high gain coincides with low stability and vice versa. It is now clear that cortical inhibition is diverse, with molecularly distinguished cell classes having distinct positions within the cortical circuit. We analyze circuit models with pyramidal neurons (E) as well as parvalbumin (PV) and somatostatin (SOM) expressing interneurons. We show how, in E – PV – SOM recurrently connected networks, SOM-mediated modulation can lead to simultaneous increases in neuronal gain and network stability. Our work exposes how the impact of a modulation mediated by SOM neurons depends critically on circuit connectivity and the network state.

    1. Neuroscience
    William Hockeimer, Ruo-Yah Lai ... James J Knierim
    Research Article

    The hippocampus is believed to encode episodic memory by binding information about the content of experience within a spatiotemporal framework encoding the location and temporal context of that experience. Previous work implies a distinction between positional inputs to the hippocampus from upstream brain regions that provide information about an animal’s location and nonpositional inputs which provide information about the content of experience, both sensory and navigational. Here, we leverage the phenomenon of ‘place field repetition’ to better understand the functional dissociation between positional and nonpositional information encoded in CA1. Rats navigated freely on a novel maze consisting of linear segments arranged in a rectilinear, city-block configuration, which combined elements of open-field foraging and linear-track tasks. Unlike typical results in open-field foraging, place fields were directionally tuned on the maze, even though the animal’s behavior was not constrained to extended, one-dimensional (1D) trajectories. Repeating fields from the same cell tended to have the same directional preference when the fields were aligned along a linear corridor of the maze, but they showed uncorrelated directional preferences when they were unaligned across different corridors. Lastly, individual fields displayed complex time dynamics which resulted in the population activity changing gradually over the course of minutes. These temporal dynamics were evident across repeating fields of the same cell. These results demonstrate that the positional inputs that drive a cell to fire in similar locations across the maze can be behaviorally and temporally dissociated from the nonpositional inputs that alter the firing rates of the cell within its place fields, offering a potential mechanism to increase the flexibility of the system to encode episodic variables within a spatiotemporal framework provided by place cells.