Cognitive neuroscience of selective and central attention control

本研究计划研究人类感知和认知的两个主要方面，使用最新的工具来研究人类的大脑功能。研究的第一个主要领域是试图理解人类大脑是如何能够关注通过视觉感知的物体的。我们称之为选择性视觉注意。这就是我们如何能够专注于一个对象（例如，当我们开车时，一个人即将走上街道），同时我们监控许多不同的对象（其他车辆，街道标志，信号灯）。我的实验室在如何设计基于脑电图的视觉空间注意力的大脑测量方面发挥了领导作用（EEG，这是一种使用放置在头皮表面的电极对神经功能正常的成年人的非侵入性脑电活动的测量）。我还使用脑磁图技术，对人脑电活动产生的磁场进行非侵入性测量，以更精确地研究这些过程（就大脑的位置而言）。我的实验室成员也使用功能性磁共振成像（fMRI）来发现大脑如何选择视觉信息并在短期内存储这些信息（持续几秒钟的短期记忆，然后被新的记忆所取代）。研究的第二个主要焦点是多任务处理所揭示的处理限制。通常，当我们试图同时执行多个任务时，性能会受到影响（我们变得更慢，或者我们犯更多的错误，或者两者兼而有之）。多任务处理似乎会在大脑的许多不同层面上产生成本，我的实验室一直处于这一领域研究的前沿。在接下来的几年里，我将继续结合最先进的脑功能测量（EEG， MEG, fMRI）和认知心理学范式来研究在良好控制条件下的多任务处理，以了解大脑中注意力，短期记忆和语义记忆的处理机制为什么，何时何地受到多任务处理的不利影响。

This research program investigates two major aspects of human perception and cognition, using the most recent tools to study human brain function. The first major area of investigation seeks to understand how the human brain is able to pay attention to objects perceived through vision. We call this selective visual attention. This is how we are able to focus on one object (e.g., a person about to step into the street while we drive a car) as we monitor many different objects (other cars, street signs, signaling lights). My laboratory has provided a leadership role in the field for how to devise brain measures of visual spatial attention based on electroencephalography (EEG, which is the measure of electrical brain activity non-invasively in neurologically normal adults using electrodes placed on the surface of the scalp). I also magnetoencephalography, the non-invasive measure of magnetic fields produced by electrical activity in the human brain, to study these processes with greater precision (in terms of locations in the brain). Members of my laboratory also use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to discover how the brain selects visual information and stores this information over the short term (short-term memory that lasts several seconds, and then is replaced by new ones). The second major focus of research examines processing limitations revealed by multitasking. Often, when we try to perform more than one task at the same time, performance suffers (we become slower, or we make more mistakes, or both). Multitasking appears to create costs at many different levels in the brain, and my laboratory has been at the forefront of research in this domain. In coming years I will continue to combine state-of-the-art measures of brain function (EEG, MEG, fMRI) and paradigms in cognitive psychology used to study multitasking under well-controlled conditions, to understand why, where, and when, in the brain, processing mechanisms of attantion, short-term memory, and semantic memory are adversely affected by multitasking.