Causal links between parietal alpha activity and spatial auditory attention

Abstract
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Abstract

Both visual and auditory spatial selective attention result in lateralized alpha (8-14 Hz) oscillatory power in parietal cortex: alpha increases in the hemisphere ipsilateral to attentional focus. Brain stimulation studies suggest a causal relationship between parietal alpha and suppression of the representation of contralateral visual space. However, there is no evidence that parietal alpha controls auditory spatial attention. Here, we performed high definition transcranial alternating current stimulation (HD-tACS) on human subjects performing an auditory task in which they directed attention based on either spatial or nonspatial features. Alpha (10 Hz) but not theta (6 Hz) HD-tACS of right parietal cortex interfered with attending left but not right auditory space. Parietal stimulation had no effect for nonspatial auditory attention. Moreover, performance in post-stimulation trials returned rapidly to baseline. These results demonstrate a causal, frequency-, hemispheric-, and task-specific effect of parietal alpha brain stimulation on top-down control of auditory spatial attention.

Data availability

Data are available from Dryad at https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.c031nv7

The following data sets were generated

(2019) Data from: Causal links between parietal alpha activity and spatial auditory attention
Dryad Digital Repository, doi:10.5061/dryad.c031nv7.

https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.c031nv7

Article and author information

Author details

Yuqi Deng

Biomedical Engineering, Boston University, Boston, United States

Competing interests
No competing interests declared.
Robert MG Reinhart

Psychological and Brain Sciences, Boston University, Boston, United States

Competing interests
No competing interests declared.
Inyong Choi

Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Iowa, Iowa, United States

Competing interests
No competing interests declared.
Barbara G Shinn-Cunningham

Carnegie Mellon Neuroscience Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, United States

For correspondence
bgsc@andrew.cmu.edu

Competing interests
Barbara G Shinn-Cunningham, Senior editor, eLife.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-5096-5914

Funding

National Institutes of Health (R01 DC015988)

Barbara G Shinn-Cunningham

Office of Naval Research (N000141812069)

Barbara G Shinn-Cunningham

National Institutes of Health (R01 MH-114877)

Robert MG Reinhart

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

Ethics

Human subjects: All subjects gave informed consent, as approved by the Boston University Charles River Campus IRB, under protocol 3597E.

Copyright

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.