The relationship between alpha power and heart rate variability commonly seen in various mental states.

The extensive exploration of the correlation between electroencephalogram (EEG) and heart rate variability (HRV) has yielded inconsistent outcomes, largely attributable to variations in the tasks employed in the studies. The direct relationship between EEG and HRV is further complicated by alpha power, which is susceptible to influences such as mental fatigue and sleepiness. This research endeavors to examine the brain-heart interplay typically observed during periods of music listening and rest. In an effort to mitigate the indirect effects of mental states on alpha power, subjective fatigue and sleepiness were measured during rest, while emotional valence and arousal were evaluated during music listening. Partial correlation analyses unveiled positive associations between occipital alpha2 power (10-12 Hz) and nHF, an indicator of parasympathetic activity, under both music and rest conditions. These findings underscore brain-heart interactions that persist even after the effects of other variables have been accounted for.

Theoretical and Technical Issues Concerning the Measurement of Alpha Frequency and the Application of Signal Detection Theory: Comment on Buergers and Noppeney (2022).

Classical and recent evidence has suggested that alpha oscillations play a critical role in temporally discriminating or binding successively presented items. Challenging this view, Buergers and Noppeney [Buergers, S., & Noppeney, U. The role of alpha oscillations in temporal binding within and across the senses. Nature Human Behaviour, 6, 732-742, 2022] found that by combining EEG, psychophysics, and signal detection theory, neither prestimulus nor resting-state alpha frequency influences perceptual sensitivity and bias in the temporal binding task. We propose the following four points that should be considered when interpreting the role of alpha oscillations, and especially their frequency, on perceptual temporal binding: (1) Multiple alpha components can be contaminated in conventional EEG analysis; (2) the effect of alpha frequency on perception will interact with alpha power; (3) prestimulus and resting-state alpha frequency can be different from poststimulus alpha frequency, which is the frequency during temporal binding and should be more directly related to temporal binding; and (4) when applying signal detection theory under the assumption of equal variance, the assumption is often incomplete and can be problematic (e.g., the magnitude relationships between individuals in parametric sensitivity may change when converted into nonparametric sensitivity). Future directions, including solutions to each of the issues, are discussed.

Effects of cell phone presence on the control of visual attention during the Navon task.

BACKGROUND: Although cell phones can provide great convenience to our lives, research has shown that they can also affect our behavior, even when not in use. It seems that having a cell phone nearby may not be ideal when the user needs to concentrate on work. However, little is known about whether cell phone presence specifically impairs attentional control. METHODS: This study investigated whether cell phone presence can influence attentional control in the Navon task, which involves spatial switching of attention between global and local levels. RESULTS: It was found that the reaction time for all types of trials decreased when the participants had a cell phone nearby compared to when they had a mobile battery nearby. It was also found that phone dependency led to more incorrect responses among participants, but this effect was independent of the influence of phone presence on the Navon task performance. CONCLUSIONS: These findings indicate that cell phone presence may have a positive influence on the perceptual process of the Navon letter, suggesting that the effects of phone presence are not always negative. One implication provided by this study is that it is possible to challenge the assertion that cell phones should always be excluded from the workplace by highlighting the positive effects of their presence.

The influence of peripheral information on a proactive process during multitasking.

The aim of this study was to examine whether peripheral information facilitates proactive processes during multitasking. For this purpose, peripheral information was presented regularly during multitasking and its effects on the performance of a tracking task (main task: reactive process) and a discrimination task (sub-task: proactive process) were examined. Experiment 1 presented peripheral information (white circles) in the same sensory modality (visual) as the information used for multitasking and the number of circle presentations was manipulated. In Experiment 2, a pure tone (auditory) was presented as peripheral information. We found that, in both experiments, the difficulty of the tracking task influenced discrimination performance, showing that as the difficulty of the tracking task (reactive process) increased, more cognitive resources were consumed in the tracking task, resulting in a decrease in cognitive resources available for the discrimination task (proactive process). In addition, regular presentation of peripheral information facilitated discrimination task performance in both experiments. Interestingly, this peripheral information also facilitated the tracking task performance (reactive process) even if the tracking task was difficult. Moreover, this promoting effect of the peripheral information occurred regardless of the sensory modality. This study revealed that processing of peripheral information facilitates the proactive process even if more cognitive resources are consumed, and that this facilitating effect does not conflict with multitasking and provides a margin of cognitive resources and also facilitates the reactive process. Our results provide evidence of how peripheral information and cognitive resources are used during multitasking.

Can enhancement and suppression concurrently guide attention? An assessment at the individual level.

BACKGROUND: Although people can pay attention to targets while ignoring distractors, previous research suggests that target enhancement and distractor suppression work separately and independently. Here, we sought to replicate previous findings and re-establish their independence. METHODS: We employed an internet-based psychological experiment. We presented participants with a visual search task in which they searched for a specified shape with or without a singleton. We replicated the singleton-presence benefit in search performance, but this effect was limited to cases where the target color was fixed across all trials. In a randomly intermixed probe task (30% of all trials), the participants searched for a letter among colored probes; we used this task to assess how far attention was separately allocated toward the target or distractor dimensions. RESULTS: We found a negative correlation between target enhancement and distractor suppression, indicating that the participants who paid closer attention to target features ignored distractor features less effectively and vice versa. Averaged data showed no benefit from target color or cost from distractor color, possibly because of the substantial differences in strategy across participants. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that target enhancement and distractor suppression guide attention in mutually dependent ways and that the relative contribution of these components depends on the participants' search strategy.

Frequency- and phase-dependent effects of auditory entrainment on attentional blink.

Attentional blink (AB) is the impaired detection of a second target (T2) after a first target has been identified. In this paper, we investigated the functional roles of alpha and theta oscillations on AB by determining how much preceding rhythmic auditory stimulation affected the performance of AB. Healthy young adults participated in the experiment online. We found that when two targets were embedded in rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) of distractors at 10 Hz (i.e., alpha frequency), the magnitude of AB increased with auditory stimuli. The increase was limited to the case when the frequency and phase of auditory stimuli matched the following RSVP stream. On the contrary, when only two targets were presented without distractors, auditory stimuli at theta, not alpha, increased the AB magnitude. These results indicate that neural oscillations at two different frequencies, namely, alpha and theta, are involved in attentional blink.

Effects of the presence of a cell phone and exposure to natural environments on remote associates task performance.

In today's advanced information society, creativity in work is highly valued, and there is growing interest in the kinds of work environments that produce more creative outcomes. Recent researchers have demonstrated that when environmental factors change a worker's attentional state to a diffused state, the worker has access to more information than usual, which can contribute to creativity. Here, we examined whether manipulating environmental factors (the presence of a cell phone and exposure to natural environment) that could affect such attention states would improve performance on the Remote Associates Task, a measure of creativity. Our results showed that the presence of a cell phone increased creative performance regardless of immersion in natural environment. In contrast, exposure to nature did not facilitate creative performance; instead, feelings of pleasure increased, and frustration decreased. These results suggest that the presence of a cell phone can enhance creativity by influencing workers' attentional states. The current study provides a meaningful approach to enhancing creativity by modulating attentional states through environmental factors. It also highlights the essential features of environmental factors that can moderate creative abilities.

Negative cues lead to more inefficient search than positive cues even at later stages of visual search.

Observers can focus their attention on task-relevant items in visual search when they have prior knowledge about the target's properties (i.e., positive cues). However, little is known about how negative cues, which specify the features of task-irrelevant items, can be used to guide attention away from distractors and how their effects differ from those of positive cues. It has been proposed that when a distractor color is cued, people would first select the to-be-ignored items early in search and then inhibit them later. The present study investigated how the effects of positive and negative cues differ throughout the visual search process. The results showed that positive cues sped up the early stage of visual search and that negative cues led to initial selection for inhibition. We further found that visual search with negative cues was more inefficient than that with positive cues even at later stages, suggesting that sustained inhibition is needed throughout the visual search process. Taken together, the results indicate that positive and negative cues have different functions: prior knowledge about target features can weight task-relevant information at early stages of visual search, and negative cues are used more inefficiently even at later stages of visual search.

Electrophysiological evidence that top-down knowledge controls working memory processing for subsequent visual search.

Items in working memory guide visual attention toward a memory-matching object. Recent studies have shown that when searching for an object this attentional guidance can be modulated by knowing the probability that the target will match an item in working memory. Here, we recorded the P3 and contralateral delay activity to investigate how top-down knowledge controls the processing of working memory items. Participants performed memory task (recognition only) and memory-or-search task (recognition or visual search) in which they were asked to maintain two colored oriented bars in working memory. For visual search, we manipulated the probability that target had the same color as memorized items (0, 50, or 100%). Participants knew the probabilities before the task. Target detection in 100% match condition was faster than that in 50% match condition, indicating that participants used their knowledge of the probabilities. We found that the P3 amplitude in 100% condition was larger than in other conditions and that contralateral delay activity amplitude did not vary across conditions. These results suggest that more attention was allocated to the memory items when observers knew in advance that their color would likely match a target. This led to better search performance despite using qualitatively equal working memory representations.