The effect of selective attention on pattern-specific visual evoked potentials

In a complex choice reaction time experiment, patterned stimuli without luminance change were presented, and pattern-specific visual evoked potentials to lower half-field stimulation were recorded. Two experimental conditions were used. The first was the between-field selection, where square patterns were presented in either the lower or the upper half of the visual field. In a given stimulus run one of the half-fields was task-relevant, and the subjects' task was to press a microswitch to stimuli of higher duration value (GO stimuli), while they had to ignore shorter ones, i. e. stimuli of lower apparent spatial contrast (NOGO stimuli). They had to ignore the stimuli appearing in the irrelevant half-field (IRR stimuli). In order to ensure proper fixation, the subjects had to press another microswitch at the onset of a dim light at the fixation point (CRT stimuli). Our second experimental condition was the within-field selection, where the GO, NOGO, and IRR stimuli appeared in the lower half of the visual field. GO and NOGO were square patterns while IRR stimuli were constructed of circles, or vice versa. (The CRT stimuli were the same as in the previous condition.) Three pattern-specific visual evoked potential components were identified, i. e. CI (70 ms latency), CII (100 ms latency), and CIII (170 ms latency). There were marked selective attention effects on both the CI-CII and CII-CIII peak-to-peak amplitudes. In both experimental conditions, responses with the highest amplitude were evoked by the GO type of stimuli, while the IRR stimuli evoked the smallest responses. According to these results, attention effects on the pattern-specific visual evoked potentials in the first 200 ms cannot be attributed to a simple stimulus set kind of selection.