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Modulations of early somatosensory ERP components by transient and sustained spatial attention

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Abstract.

To investigate when and how spatial attention affects somatosensory processing, event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded in response to mechanical tactile stimuli delivered to the left and right hand while attention was directed to one of these hands. The attended hand either remained constant throughout an experimental block (sustained attention), or was changed across successive trials (transient attention). Attentional modulations of the N140 component and a sustained 'processing negativity' for attended stimuli were observed in both attention conditions. However, attentional effects on earlier somatosensory components differed systematically. Sustained attention resulted in a contralateral negativity overlapping with the N80 component, while transient attention was reflected by a bilateral positivity overlapping with the P100 component. This dissociation indicates that sustained and transient attention affect different somatosensory areas. It is suggested that sustained attention can modulate tactile processing within primary somatosensory cortex (S1), while effects of transient attention are located beyond S1. Overall, results demonstrate that spatial selectivity in touch is mediated by activity modulations in modality-specific somatosensory cortex.

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Notes

  1. In these studies, attentional modulations of the somatosensory N140 component were also found when attention was directed to one side for a visual or auditory task, thus demonstrating crossmodal links in spatial attention (cf. Eimer 2001; Eimer and Driver 2001 for reviews).

  2. However, note that recent intracranial SEP recordings (Barba et al. 2002; Frot and Maguière 1999) have suggested that some S2 sources may already be active between 60 ms and 90 ms poststimulus.

  3. Note that this result is in line with informal observations from our previous study investigating crossmodal links in spatial attention (Eimer et al. 2001), where attentional modulations of the contralateral N80 component were present for sustained attention (Experiment 1; see also Hötting et al. 2003), but not for transient attention (Experiment 2).

  4. One finding which may appear inconsistent with this hypothesis is that vocal RTs were faster with trial-by-trial cueing than with sustained attention. However, this difference is presumably due to a spatially unspecific alerting effect of precues. Visual stimuli presented at the start of each trial act as warning signals, and thus increase overall response readiness. This will speed up responses, especially if targets are infrequent, as in the present study.

  5. Another issue that may be resolved in future high-density SEP studies is whether tactile-spatial attention modulates the amplitudes of early exogenous SEP components (N80, P100), or whether the effects of attention observed in the N80 and P100 time range are primarily due to an overlap of these components with an endogenous attentional negativity (or positivity). Figure 2 suggests that early attentional modulations only partially overlapped with the N80 and P100, which seems more in line with the overlap idea than with a pure amplitude modulation account.

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Acknowledgements.

This research was supported by a grant from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC). The authors thank Carolyn Rice for technical assistance, and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Birkbeck College, University of London, London, UK

    Martin Eimer & Bettina Forster

  2. Department of Psychology, Birkbeck College, University of London, Malet Street, London, WC1E 7HX, UK

    Martin Eimer

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  1. Martin Eimer
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  2. Bettina Forster
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Correspondence to Martin Eimer.

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Eimer, M., Forster, B. Modulations of early somatosensory ERP components by transient and sustained spatial attention. Exp Brain Res 151, 24–31 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-003-1437-1

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