Mechanisms of Willed Attention

在我们的日常生活中，为了采取适当的行动来生存和发展，对我们周围的挑战保持警惕是至关重要的。我们成功做到这一点的核心是能够关注最突出、最重要的事件和对象，同时忽略可能使我们偏离目标的分散注意力的信息。有几个因素有助于确定事件和对象的相关性，包括我们的瞬间目标（例如，从家里安全导航到超市），我们过去的经验和知识（例如，我们回忆起商店附近的街道正在施工，因此我们必须注意绕行标志并改变我们的正常路线），以及遇到意外事件（例如，一个孩子在街上追球）。我们大脑的注意力系统帮助我们管理许多外部挑战，以实现我们的关键目标。但每天，我们也会做出许多自发的决定，把注意力集中在一个新的物体或事件上，这是我们自己的内在选择，而不是由外部信号、线索或事件驱动的。为了充分理解注意力，研究与自我启动和外部驱动的注意力相对应的大脑活动是至关重要的。该项目使用非侵入性脑神经成像技术来测量大脑在执行具有挑战性任务时的活动。这些技术使我们能够测量志愿者在关注视觉刺激而忽略分散注意力的刺激时大脑的电活动。用脑电图（EEG）记录下的大脑活动产生了极好的时间信号，精确到毫秒，关于支持注意力的潜在大脑过程。另一种脑成像技术，被称为功能性磁共振成像（fMRI），扫描大脑并提供极好的空间分辨率，揭示潜在的活跃大脑网络和不同的大脑结构，使成功的注意力和行动。利用这两种技术，我们的研究通过关注人类意志如何塑造我们所关注的事物，来研究当环境中没有外部信号来吸引或引导我们的注意力时，人类是如何引导他们的注意力的。利用机器学习和人工智能方法进行数据分析，初步结果揭示了新的大脑电信号，这些信号是人类志愿者在不久的将来关注什么的预测性大脑特征。对启动我们自愿注意的大脑机制的识别，可以让我们更深入地理解，在疾病、疲劳或高要求的环境中，注意力是如何失效的。这项研究也有可能导致有价值的干预措施的发展，包括增强我们的注意力能力，以支持人类健康和提高人类的表现，无论是在拥挤的交通中驾驶汽车，还是在月球上着陆航天器。结合实验研究，该项目的一个关键目标是通过让少数民族和贫困学生参与研究，推动STEM教育的发展和多样化。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

In our daily lives, it is vitally important to be aware and alert to the challenges of our surroundings, in order take appropriate actions to survive and thrive. Central to our success in doing so is the ability to attend to the most salient and important events and objects, while also ignoring distracting information that may divert us from our goals. Several factors contribute to determining the relevance of events and objects, including our momentary goals (e.g., navigating safely from home to the supermarket), our past experiences and knowledge (e.g. we recall that the street near the store is undergoing construction so we have to attend to the detour signs and change our normal route), and encountering unexpected events (e.g. a child running after a ball in the street). Our brain’s attention system helps us to manage the many external challenges to achieving our key goals. But everyday, we also make many self-willed decisions to focus our attention on a new object or event, arising from our own internal choice, not driven by external signals, cues or events. To fully understand attention, it is crucial to investigate the brain activity corresponding to self-initiated, as well as externally driven attention.This project uses non-invasive brain neuroimaging techniques to measure the brain’s activity during the performance of challenging tasks. These techniques allow us to measure the electrical activity of the brain as human volunteers pay attention to visual stimuli and ignore distracting stimuli. Recordings of brain activity with the EEG (electroencephalogram) yield superb temporal signals with millisecond precision about the underlying brain processes that support attention. Another brain imaging technique, known as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), scans the brain and delivers superb spatial resolution, revealing the underlying active brain networks and different brain structures that enable successful attention and action. Utilizing these two techniques, our research investigates how humans are able to direct their attention when there are no external signals in the environment to attract or direct our attention, by focusing on how human volition shapes what we attend to. Using machine learning and artificial intelligence methods for data analyses, preliminary results have revealed new electrical brain signals that are predictive brain signatures of what a human volunteer pays attention to in the immediate future. Identification of the brain mechanisms that initiate our voluntary attention can lead to deeper understanding of how attention fails in disease, with fatigue, or in highly demanding circumstances. This research also has the potential to lead to the development of valuable interventions, including the augmentation of our attention abilities to support human health and improve human performance, whether it be navigating one’s automobile in heavy traffic, or landing a spacecraft on the moon. In conjunction with experimental studies, a key goal of this project is also to advance and diversify STEM education by involving minority and underprivileged students in the research.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.