Attention
Since the human visual system is continually being bombarded with input, it is necessary to have effective mechanisms for filtering out irrelevant information and attenuate those of interest. What is the physiological substrate of these mechanisms which often have been related to attention? It has been proposed that alpha activity reflects functional inhibition allowing the visual system to process relevant input while blocking out irrelevant input. I’m interested in the role of cortical alpha as well as delta/theta oscillations during different attentional states.
Händel B, Haarmeier, T, Jensen, O. (2011). Alpha Oscillations Correlate with the Successful Inhibition of Unattended Stimuli. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 23(9), 2494–2502.
Haegens S., Händel B, Jensen O. (2011) Top-Down Controlled Alpha Band Activity in Somatosensory Areas Determines Behavioral Performance in a Discrimination Task, The Journal of Neuroscience, 31(14):5197–5204.
Händel B, Lutzenberger W, Thier P, Haarmeier T. (2008) Selective Attention Increases the Dependency of Cortical Responses on Visual Motion Coherence in Man. Cerebral Cortex, 18: 2902-2908.
