Cognitive neuroscience of selective and central attention control

这项研究计划调查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脑功能。第一个主要研究领域试图了解人脑是如何能够注意到通过视觉感知的对象的。我们称之为选择性视觉注意。这就是当我们监视许多不同的对象(其他汽车、街道标志、信号灯)时，我们如何能够专注于一个对象(例如，当我们开车时即将步入街道的人)。我的实验室在如何设计基于脑电(EEG)的视觉空间注意力的大脑测量方面发挥了领导作用。EEG是使用放置在头皮表面的电极非侵入性地测量神经学正常成年人的大脑电活动。我还做了脑磁图，这是对人类大脑中电活动产生的磁场的非侵入性测量，以更精确地研究这些过程(就大脑中的位置而言)。我的实验室成员还使用功能磁共振成像(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，然后被新的记忆取代)。研究的第二个主要焦点是考察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，或者犯更多错误，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，我将继续将最先进的大脑功能测量方法(EEG、MEG、fMRI)与认知心理学中用于研究在控制良好的条件下进行多任务处理的范式结合起来，以了解为什么、在哪里、何时在大脑中，注意力、短期记忆和语义记忆的处理机制会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.