The Cognitive Neuroscience of Selective Attention in Dynamic Behavioral and Psychological Contexts

从识别我们在冰箱里寻找的物品到注意交通信号从绿色变成红色，我们如何关注这个世界对于我们日常生活中安全有效的导航至关重要。 毫不奇怪，在过去的几十年里，认知神经科学的许多研究都集中在理解我们如何关注周围的世界上，这些研究不仅涉及了解神经系统在大脑中是如何组织的，而且还涉及这些系统如何映射到我们的思想结构上。 为了推进我们对注意力的基本认识，我的建议涉及理解我们对世界上物体和事件的注意力如何随着时间的推移而动态变化，以响应我们在日常活动中正在做的事情和思考-例如步行，购物和驾驶。具体来说，计划中的研究涉及使用基于EEG的脑电活动测量来研究三种不同动态背景下的注意力。 第一个是关于我们如何使用我们的注意力来帮助引导我们的身体移动，或行走。 这里的重点是研究有跌倒问题的老年人--老年人的行动障碍与注意力缺陷有关。 通过了解跌倒者的注意力是如何受损的，我们可以帮助理解当一切正常时，我们是如何使用注意力来引导移动的。 第二个注意力情境是关于走神，或者说我们所有人的思想都有一种自然的倾向，即从我们正在做的事情中游离出来，比如开车时经常发生的事情，专注于其他事情，比如昨晚的晚餐谈话或即将到来的假期计划。 正如我实验室的工作所显示的那样，我们现在知道，走神会极大地减少我们对外部世界的注意力。 一组新的研究计划更仔细地描述这些影响的广度和深度。 最后，第三种注意力情境涉及心理因素，这些因素可以触发对外部世界中的物体和事件的高度注意状态--拥有一个物体的所有权，比如购物时，以及接触新的事件或经历，比如访问一个新的国家。 在这里，我们的目标是研究这些情况是如何触发高度注意状态的，以及这种影响的时间过程。我的建议对基础研究以及如何将其应用于加拿大人的利益都具有重要意义。 在纯科学方面，关于注意力的研究长期以来一直集中在理解它如何帮助识别和识别视觉对象。 这个提议的新奇之处在于，它调查了选择性视觉注意在调节我们与物理环境的日常互动中所起的更广泛的功能作用。 就实际意义而言，该提案侧重于基础研究，但研究必须坚定地着眼于弥合所涉及的临床意义。 我们对跌倒者注意力缺陷的了解可以帮助我们了解如何更好地治疗老年人的这一普遍问题。 我们对走神的了解可以帮助我们理解抑郁症和注意力缺陷障碍等疾病，这些问题与我们对外部世界的注意力有关。 我们对注意力和物体所有权的了解可能会给我们对羊群行为和强迫症的新认识。 但总的来说，这项研究不仅有助于促进我们对基本神经认知机制及其潜在临床后果的理解，而且这些项目本身也为培养下一代加拿大认知神经科学家提供了一个绝佳的机会。

From identifying the item we're looking for in the fridge to noticing a traffic signal changing from green to red, how we pay attention to the world is vital for safe, effective navigation through our everyday lives. Not surprisingly then, over the last several decades much research in cognitive neuroscience has centered on understanding how we go about paying attention to the world around us, research that concerns understanding not just how neural systems are organized in the brain, but how these systems map on to the structure of our minds. Towards advancing our basic knowledge of attention, my proposal concerns understanding how our attention to objects and events in the world dynamically changes over time, in response to what we're doing and thinking in the course of our on-going, everyday activities--such as walking, shopping, and driving.**Specifically, the planned studies involve using EEG-based measures of brain electrical activity to investigate attention in three different dynamic contexts. The first concerns how we use our attention to help guide our physical mobility, or walking. The focus here is on studying older individuals who have problems with falling--a mobility impairment in seniors linked to deficits in attentional capacities. By understanding how attentional capacities are impaired in fallers, we can help understand how we use our attention to guide mobility when everything is working normally. The second attentional context concerns mind wandering, or the natural tendency we all have for our thoughts to drift away from what we're currently doing, such as commonly happens when driving, to focus on other things, like last night's dinner conversation or plans for an upcoming holiday. As work in my lab has shown, we now know that periods of mind wandering dramatically reduce our attention to the outside world. A new set of studies plans to more carefully characterize the breadth and depth of these effects. Finally, the third attentional context concerns psychological factors that can trigger heightened attentional states to objects and events in the outside world--taking ownership over an object, such as when shopping, and being exposed to novel events or experiences, such as when visiting a new country. Here the goal is to examine how these situations can trigger heightened attentional states, and the time course of such effects.**My proposal has critical implications both for basic research and for how it can be applied for the benefit of Canadians. In terms of pure science, research on attention has long centered on understanding how it aids the identification and recognition of visual objects. The novelty of the proposal here is investigating the much broader functional role selective visual attention plays in mediating our everyday interactions with the physical environment. In terms of practical significance, the proposal focuses on basic research, but research that has a firm eye towards bridging to the clinical implications involved. What we learn about attentional deficits in fallers can help us to understand how to better treat this widespread problem in seniors. What we learn about mind wandering can help us to understand disorders such as depression and attention deficit disorder, issues that concern our attention to the outside world. And what we learn about attention and object ownership may give new insight into hording behaviors and obsessive/compulsive disorders. But taken together, the research doesn't just promise to help advance our understanding of basic neurocognitive mechanisms and their potential clinical consequences, but the projects themselves represent an outstanding opportunity for training the next generation of Canadian cognitive neuroscientists.