Brain potentials and behavioral responses associated with attention to hard- and easy-to-discriminate passive knee...

We investigated event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to passive ramp movements of the knee joint. The knee movements were either attended or unattended and were either very easy or very hard to detect. We used special methods to ensure that movement only activated muscle spindle and joint receptors. The first movement-related ERP started 20 ms after movement onset, and had a contralateral maximum. This initial ERP did not differ as a function of attention and movement discriminability. Signal detection analysis of the behavioral data suggested that hard-to-detect movements could be discriminated above chance level, but were not reported because of a decision bias. At 60-100 ms, an ERP was observed that discriminated detected from undetected hard-to-detect movements. Starting at 80 ms, we found an ERP that was unique to movements that were attended and easy to detect. We discuss that (1) the initial ERP reflects activation of preconscious sensory processors, (2) the second ERP may reflect detection that fails to attract attention, and (3) the third ERP reflects active focusing of attention on the movement.