Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2011 May;48(5):624-32.
doi: 10.1111/j.1469-8986.2010.01129.x. Epub 2010 Sep 29.

Surprise? Early visual novelty processing is not modulated by attention

Elise C Tarbi  1 , Xue Sun, Phillip J Holcomb, Kirk R Daffner
Affiliations

Surprise? Early visual novelty processing is not modulated by attention

Elise C Tarbi et al. Psychophysiology. 2011 May.

Abstract

This study investigated the influence of direction of attention on the early detection of visual novelty, as indexed by the anterior N2. The anterior N2 was measured in young subjects (n=32) under an attend and an ignore condition. Subjects were presented standard, target/rare, and perceptually novel visual stimuli under both conditions, but under the ignore condition, attention was directed toward an auditory n-back task. The size of the anterior N2 to novel stimuli did not differ between conditions and was significantly larger than the anterior N2 to all other stimulus types. Furthermore, under the ignore condition, the anterior N2 to visual novel stimuli was not affected by the level of difficulty of the auditory n-back task (3-back vs. 2-back). Our findings suggest that the early processing of visual novelty, as measured by the size of the anterior N2, is not strongly modulated by direction of attention.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Midline grand average ERPs at frontocentral sites (Fz, FCz, Cz, Pz) in response to novel, target/rare, and standard stimuli under the A) Attend condition and the B) Ignore condition. In (A) arrows illustrate the N1, P2, N2, and P3a waves at Fz, and the P3b wave at Pz under the Attend condition. In (B) arrows illustrate the N1, P2, N2, and P3a waves at Fz.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Midline grand average ERPs at frontocentral sites (Fz, FCz, Cz) in response to novel stimuli under the Attend vs. Ignore conditions.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Midline grand average ERPs at frontocentral sites (Fz, FCz, Cz) in response to novel visual stimuli under the Ignore condition when subjects focused on the 2-back task vs. 3-back task in the auditory modality.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. 4th Edition. 4th ed. Washington, D.C: American Psychiatric Association; 1994.
    1. Barcelo F, Escera C, Corral MJ, Perianez JA. Task switching and novelty processing activate a common neural network for cognitive control. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. 2006;18:1734–1748. - PubMed
    1. Barcelo F, Perianez JA, Knight RT. Think differently: a brain orienting response to task novelty. NeuroReport. 2002;13:1887–1892. - PubMed
    1. Berlyne D. Conflict, Arousal and Curiosity. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill; 1960.
    1. Chao LL, Nielsen-Bohlman L, Knight RT. Auditory event-related potentials dissociate early and late memory processes. Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology. 1995;96:157–168. - PubMed

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources