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Visual Selective Attention P300 Source in Frontal-Parietal Lobe: ERP and fMRI Study
Qiuzhu Zhang1, Cimei Luo1, Ronald Ngetich1
1MOE Key Lab for Neuroinformation, High-Field Magnetic Resonance Brain Imaging Key Laboratory of Sichuan Province, Center for Psychiatry and Psychology, School of Life Science and Technology, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, 610054, China.
This study investigated the brain sources of P300, an attention-related brain signal, during visual selective attention tasks. Findings reveal distinct frontal and parietal lobe contributions to P300, differing between pop-out and search tasks.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Cognitive Psychology
Background:
- Visual selective attention involves bottom-up (e.g., pop-out tasks) and top-down (e.g., search tasks) mechanisms.
- The P300 event-related potential (ERP) reflects attention processing, but its neural sources remain debated.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the neural sources of P300 elicited by distinct visual selective attention tasks.
- To differentiate the brain regions involved in bottom-up versus top-down attention control.
Main Methods:
- Event-related potentials (ERP) were recorded from 13 participants during pop-out and search tasks.
- Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to assess brain activation in 26 participants during the same tasks.
- Integrated ERP and fMRI data were analyzed to achieve high temporal and spatial resolution of P300 sources.
Main Results:
- The pop-out task elicited a larger P300 amplitude compared to the search task.
- P300 activity was observed in both frontal and parietal lobes, with pop-out tasks predominantly engaging the parietal lobe and search tasks the frontal lobe.
- Integrated ERP-fMRI analysis identified specific neural sources, including the right precentral gyrus, left superior frontal gyrus, left middle temporal gyrus, left rolandic operculum, right postcentral gyrus, and left angular gyrus.
Conclusions:
- Both frontal and parietal lobes are crucial for generating the P300 component during visual selective attention.
- The specific contribution of these lobes differs depending on whether attention is driven by bottom-up (pop-out) or top-down (search) processes.
