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Phase-dependent neuronal coding of objects in short-term memory. Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in your attention networks. Such a relationship is difficult to confirm scientifically because there are so many variables at work; scientists have only begun to look at this relationship in a systematic, rigorous fashion.
This observation set off a wave of marketing hype that continues to this day. Despite numerous efforts, however, scientists have not reliably replicated the phenomenon. Nonetheless, these studies have involved only brief periods of exposure to music, rather than explicit musical training or practice. More recent attempts to link arts training with general improvements in cognition have relied on a different approach.
Researchers have focused on longer periods of engaged participation and practice in arts training rather than simple exposure to music. For example, in , E. Glenn Schellenberg of the University of Toronto at Mississauga published results from a randomized, controlled study showing that the IQ scores of 72 children who were enrolled in a yearlong music training program increased significantly compared with 36 children who received no training and 36 children who took drama lessons.
The IQ scores of children taking drama lessons did not increase, but these children did improve more than the other groups on ratings of selected social skills. In a study published in the Journal of Neuroscience in March , researchers Ellen Winner of Boston College, Gottfried Schlaug of Harvard University and their colleagues at McGill University used neuroimaging scans to examine brain changes in young children who underwent a four-year-long music training program, compared with a control group of children who did not receive music training.
They did not find the same changes in the control group. The scientists also found improvements in musically relevant motor and auditory skills, a phenomenon called near transfer. In this case, the improvements did not transfer to measures of cognition less related to music—termed far transfer.
We do not know why far transfer to IQ, for example was found in the Schellenberg study and not in this one. Taken as a whole, the findings to date tell us that music training can indeed change brain circuitry and, in at least some circumstances, can improve general cognition. But they leave unsettled the question of under what circumstances training in one cognitive area reliably transfers to improvements in other cognitive skills.
From our perspective, the key to transfer is diligence: Practicing for long periods of time and in an absorbed way can cause changes in more than the specific brain network related to the skill.
Sustained focus can also produce stronger and more efficient attention networks, and these key networks in turn affect cognitive skills more generally. Practicing a skill, either in the arts or in other areas, builds a rich repertoire of information related to the skill.
Scientists conducting neuroimaging studies of many human tasks have identified networks of widely scattered neural structures that act together to perform a given skill, which may involve sensory, motor, attentional, emotional and language processes. The arts are no exception: Specific brain networks underlie specific art forms, as illustrated in Figure 1. As we practice a task, its underlying network becomes more efficient, and connections among brain areas that perform different aspects of the task become more tightly integrated.
This process is analogous to an orchestra playing a symphony. The music that results from the integration of orchestral sections is likely to sound more fluid the hundredth time they play a piece than the first time.
Neuroimaging studies have also proved that the following specialized neural networks underlie various aspects of attention 1 see Figure 2 :.
I have been particularly interested in the executive attention network. Executive attention skills, especially the abilities to control emotions and to focus thoughts sometimes called cognitive control , are critical aspects of social and academic success throughout childhood.
Empathy toward others, the ability to control reward-motivated impulses and even control of the propensity to cheat or lie have been linked scientifically to aspects of executive attention.
Given the importance of the executive attention network, my colleagues and I wondered what might improve its efficiency. To find out, we adapted a series of exercises, originally designed to train monkeys for space travel, to investigate the effects of attention-training exercises in 4- to 6-year-old children. We randomly assigned the children to either a control condition which involved watching and responding to interactive videos or training on joystick-operated computer exercises designed to engage attention networks through motivation and reward see the image at top right.
Importantly, this improvement transferred to higher scores on IQ tests designed for young children. These data suggest that increasing the efficiency of the executive attention network also improves general cognition as measured by IQ. Rosario Rueda of the University of Granada, Spain, and colleagues subsequently replicated this key finding in an as yet unpublished study of Spanish children. In recent years, various approaches to training children to pay attention have been carried out in many different settings.
The results show that tasks specifically designed to exercise the underlying networks can indeed improve attention, and that this kind of training can translate to better general cognition. In one of the strongest studies to support this finding, measures of cognitive control significantly improved in preschoolers enrolled in a yearlong training program that incorporated different activities designed to sharpen executive functions.
For many children, interest in a particular art form leads to sustained attention when practicing that art form. Moreover, engaging in art often involves resolving conflicts among competing possible responses, such as when choosing the correct note to play at a given moment. Both studies unfortunately lack a control condition in which irrelevant stimuli are presented but not attended, so it is not clear how much perceptual attention contributes to their encoding into WM.
Does attending to a stimulus in the environment distract the focus of attention from information in WM? Evidence suggesting that attending to perceptual stimuli does distract the focus of attention comes from studies using multivariate neural signals to read out the information in the pattern of neural activity. However, in these studies the irrelevant stimulus hardly affected memory performance. Therefore, an alternative possibility is that the content of the focus of attention is represented in pre-frontal cortex Bichot et al.
To conclude, surprisingly little can be said with confidence: Perceptual attention to stimuli often — but not always — leads to them being encoded into WM to some extent, so that they interfere with similar information. The use of perceptual attention for rehearsal has not been demonstrated convincingly. Whether the focus of attention can stay on an item in WM while perceptual attention engages with a different stimulus in the environment is still unclear. How does information in WM affect perceptual attention?
It appears plausible that holding some information in WM tends to draw perceptual attention to similar information in the environment, thereby facilitating its processing.
Initial evidence for that assumption comes from experiments by Awh et al. This finding provides further evidence for the special functional status of representations in the focus of attention i. Some theorists argue for a close relation of WM specifically to controlled attention Kane et al. The evidence for this link comes primarily from correlations between measures of WM capacity and controlled attention reviewed above in the section on resources for attention control.
There are at least two interpretations of this correlation. This account has difficulties explaining why measures of controlled attention were found to correlate substantially also with measures of visual WM in which no irrelevant stimuli were presented, and no contents need to be removed from WM Unsworth et al. A second explanation, which I believe to be more promising, implies the reverse direction of causality.
It starts from the assumption that the main function of WM is to hold representations that control what we think and do, including what we direct our attention to Oberauer, For instance, in visual search perceptual attention can be controlled by holding a template of the search target in the focus of attention in WM Olivers et al. Selection of responses to stimuli in accordance with the currently relevant task goal is accomplished by holding a task set — a representation of the relevant stimulus categories, the response options, and the mapping between them — in WM Monsell, ; Oberauer et al.
In both cases, control could also rely on representations in long-term memory. For the case of visual search, Woodman, Carlisle, and Reinhart present strong evidence that search targets that repeat across successive trials are held in WM only for the first few trials, after which search is controlled by target representations in long-term memory.
For the case of response selection, practicing a task with consistent stimulus-response mappings leads to long-term learning of these mappings, greatly improving task performance. Representations in WM are necessary for control when we want to do something new — searching for a new target, or carrying out a new task that we just learned from instruction.
WM representations are particularly important when the new action is inconsistent with one that we have learned — for instance, searching for a target that used to consistently figure as distractor, or switching from one task to another that maps the same stimuli to new responses. In these cases, WM provides a medium for building and maintaining new representations that control our cognitive processes and actions, if necessary countermanding our long-term knowledge.
On these assumptions, the correlation between WM capacity and performance in controlled-attention tasks arises because people with better WM capacity have better i. To conclude, I argue that WM plays a crucial role in controlling attention and action by holding the representations that guide attention and action.
Attention is closely related to WM. Unpacking this relationship reveals many different ways in which the WM-attention link can be spelled out. A first divide is between theoretical ideas about attention as a resource on the one hand, and about attention as a mechanism for selecting and prioritizing information on the other.
The first approach entails the theoretical commitment that a limited attentional resource is at least in part responsible for the capacity limit of WM. This assumption has considerable empirical support but also significant weaknesses for a review see Oberauer et al. The second approach does not imply a commitment to any assumptions about WM or attention, and therefore offers a more neutral starting point for asking how the two are related.
From the theoretical considerations and the evidence reviewed here I conclude that the following assertions about specific relations between attention and WM are justified:. Table 2 presents a non-exhaustive list of open questions that I believe future research should address with high priority.
I hope that this effort will lead to an increasingly more precise and nuanced picture of how WM is related to attention. I find this terminology misleading: The memory of a tree is not more internal than the perception of a tree: Both are internal representations of external objects.
A meta-control process is necessary to ensure that there is always enough resource left for control processes. If the meta-control process needs a share of the resource for itself, we are on the way to an infinite regress. At the same time, all contents of WM are prioritized over all other memory representations, and as such are attended, though on a broader level of selection. Thanks to Peter Shepherdson and Claudia von Bastian for their comments on a previous version of this manuscript.
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Selection in spatial working memory is independent of perceptual selective attention, but they interact in a shared spatial priority map.
Hollingworth, A. Memory-based attention capture when multiple items are maintained in visual working memory. Selective maintenance in visual working memory does not require sustained visual attention. Over time, scientists and researchers have found out that attention is not a single process, but rather a group of attention sub-processes.
The most accepted model for the attention sub-components is currently the hierarchical model from Sohlberg and Mateer , , which is based on clinical cases of experimental neuropsychology. According to this model, attention can be divided into the following parts: Arousal : Refers to our activation level and level of alertness, whether we are tired or energized.
Focused Attention : Refers to our ability to focus attention on a stimulus. Sustained Attention : The ability to attend to a stimulus or activity over a long period of time. Selective Attention : The ability to attend to a specific stimulus or activity in the presence of other distracting stimuli.
Alternating Attention : The ability to change focus attention between two or more stimuli. Divided Attention : The ability to attend different stimuli or attention at the same time. According to the neuroanatomical model from Posner and Petersen , there are three different attentional systems. It is closely related to the reticular formation and some of its connections, like the frontal areas, limbic systems, the thalamus, and the basal ganglia. The brain areas related to this system are the posterior parietal cortex, the lateral pulvinar nucleus of the thalamus, and the superior colliculus.
It's closely related to the prefrontal dorsolateral cortex, the orbitofrontal cortex, the anterior cingulate cortex, the supplementary motor area, and with the neostriatum striate nucleus.
Attention is necessary for the proper functioning of our other cognitive skills, which is why an alteration in any of the attentional processes may make any daily activity more difficult to complete.
However, it's important to remember that it's completely normal for attention levels to vary throughout the day, and having trouble paying attention mid-afternoon does not necessarily mean that there is any presence of an alteration.
Some factors that may affect attention levels are tiredness, fatigue, high temperatures, consuming drugs or other substances, as well as a number of others. Excessive attentional states typical of delirious states are known as hyperprosexia. The contrary is known as hypoprosexia or inattention. ADHD is characterized by a difficulty controlling and directing attention to a stimulus and controlling behavior in general. The brains of people with ADHD have been shown to have a series of anatomical differences in the nucleus accumbens, the striate nucleus, the putamen, the amygdala, the hippocampus, prefrontal areas, and the thalamus.
These neuroanatomical differences and symptoms may be the consequence of late brain maturation. Altered states of consciousness, like coma or aprosexia , a vegetative state , and a state of minimal conscinsiousness all have alterations in Arousal or in focused attention and more complex attentional sub-processes. These disorders are caused by brain damage like stroke or chronic traumatic encephalopathy CTE.
Brain damage may also cause other attentional problems like distractibility or excessive fatigue, or other more specific problems like heminegligence , dementias like Alzheimer's Disease.
On the other hand, anxiety disorders or depressive disorders tend to have an increased attentional level, specifically toward negative or anxiety-producing stimuli. Evaluating attention can be helpful to understand attention in a number of different areas.
Academic Areas to know if a student will have trouble studying or if they'll need extra breaks. Clinical or Medical Areas to know if a patient is able to carry out their daily tasks independently and safely. Professional Areas to know if a worker is able to perform well in certain positions, or if they will be able to stay focused and work well throughout their entire shift. With the help of a complete neuropsychological assessment , it is possible to easily and effectively evaluate a number of different cognitive skills, like focused attention.
This test helps to evaluate other behavioral alterations, response time, visual perception, shifting, inhibition, updating, spatial perception, processing speed, visual scanning, and hand-eye coordination.
Every cognitive skill, including attention, can be trained and improved.
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