Two different mechanisms support selective attention at different phases of training.

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Cognitive Science
• Psychology

Background:

• Selective attention prioritizes relevant sensory information for goal-directed behavior.
• Human studies link attentional gain in cortical responses to behavioral improvements.
• Nonhuman primate studies suggest neural noise reduction explains attention's behavioral facilitation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To reconcile competing accounts of attention by testing if behavioral training alters neural mechanisms.
• To investigate how extensive training impacts the neural basis of selective spatial attention.

Main Methods:

• Used electroencephalography (EEG) to measure visual responses in human subjects.
• Subjects performed a selective spatial attention task over ~1 month.
• Applied a signal detection theory (SDT) model to link neural responses to behavior.

Main Results:

• Early in training, spatial attention increased the gain of stimulus-evoked visual responses (~100 ms post-stimulus).
• After extensive training, early attentional gain diminished, yet behavioral improvements persisted.
• The SDT model required noise reduction, not gain, to explain behavior-linked neural responses post-training.

Conclusions:

• Extensive behavioral training fundamentally changes how attention modulates early cortical processing.
• Findings suggest training shifts attention mechanisms from response gain to noise reduction.
• These results aid in translating findings across species and training paradigms.