Abstract
Selective attention relies on dynamic restructuring of cortical information flow to prioritize neuronal communication between those neuronal groups conveying information about behaviorally relevant information while reducing the influence from groups encoding irrelevant and distracting information. Electrophysiological evidence suggests that such selective neuronal communication is instantiated and sustained through selective neuronal synchronization of rhythmic gamma band activity within and between neuronal groups. Attentionally modulated synchronization patterns evolve rapidly, are evident even before sensory inputs arrive, follow closely subjective readiness to process information in time, can be sustained for prolonged time periods, and convey specific information about perceptually selected sensory features and motor plans. These functional implications of selective synchronization patterns are complemented by recent insights about the mechanistic origins of rhythmic synchronization at micro- and macro- scales of cortical neuronal processing, suggesting that selective attention is subserved by precise neuronal synchronization that is selective in space, time and frequency.
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Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the European Science Foundation’s European Young Investigator Award program (P.F.), by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (P.F. and T.W.), and by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (T.W.).
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Womelsdorf, T., Fries, P. (2011). Rhythmic Neuronal Synchronization Subserves Selective Attentional Processing. In: Dehaene, S., Christen, Y. (eds) Characterizing Consciousness: From Cognition to the Clinic?. Research and Perspectives in Neurosciences. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-18015-6_7
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