Multiple foci of spatial attention in multimodal working memory

Katus, Tobias and Eimer, Martin (2016) Multiple foci of spatial attention in multimodal working memory. NeuroImage 142 , pp. 583-589. ISSN 1053-8119.

Abstract

The maintenance of sensory information in working memory (WM) is mediated by the attentional activation of stimulus representations that are stored in perceptual brain regions.Using event-related potentials (ERPs), we measured tactile and visual contralateral delay activity (tCDA / CDA components) in a bimodal WM task to concurrently track the attention-based maintenance of information stored in anatomically segregated (somatosensory and visual) brain areas. Participants received tactile and visual sample stimuli on both sides, and in different blocks, memorized these samples on the same side or on opposite sides. After a retention delay, memory was unpredictably tested for touch or vision. In same side blocks, tCDA and CDA components simultaneously emerged over the same hemisphere, contralateral to the memorized tactile / visual sample set. In opposite side blocks, these two components emerged over different hemispheres, but had the same sizes and onset latencies as in the same side condition. This finding indicates that distinct foci of tactile and visual spatial attention were concurrently maintained on task-relevant stimulus representations in WM. The independence of spatially-specific biasing mechanisms for tactile and visual WM content suggests that multimodal information is stored in distributed perceptual brain areas that are subject to modality-specific control processes, which can operate simultaneously and largely independently of each other.

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