Visual attention with auditory stimulus

Visual orienting attention is best studied using visual cues. Spatial and temporal attention have been compared using brain-imaging data. This chapter's authors developed a visual orienting attention tool to compare auditory when a visual target was presented. They also designed a control task in which subjects had to click on the response key consistent with a simultaneous spatial task. The effect of clicking the response key was removed by subtracting the brain activations elicited by clicking the response key from the results of the visual voluntary attention task. The authors then measured brain activity in sixteen healthy volunteers using functional magnetic resonance imaging (Coull, Frith, Büchel & Nobre, 2000). In the task, visual spatial attention was manipulated by a visual cue, and participants were told to ignore the auditory stimulus. A neutral task was also performed, in which a neutral cue was used. Symbolic central cues oriented subjects to spatial location only (Coull & Nobre, 1998) or gave no information about spatial location. Subjects were also scanned during a resting baseline condition in which they clicked the reaction key ten times. The reaction time for spatial location attention was faster than that without an auditory stimulus. Brain-imaging data showed that the inferior parietal lobe (IPL) and anterior cingulated cortex (ACC) were activated in the visual-spatial attention task and that the activation was enhanced during the task with the auditory stimulus.