Occipital Alpha and Gamma Oscillations Support Complementary Mechanisms for Processing Stimulus Value Associations

Marshall, Tom R.; Den Boer, Sebastiaan; Cools, Roshan; Jensen, Ole; Fallon, Sean James; Zumer, Johanna M. · 2017 · OpenAlex-citations

DOI: 10.1162/jocn_a_01185

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Summary

This study investigates the neural mechanisms underlying the interaction between selective attention and learned stimulus value associations. While selective attention prioritizes relevant information, stimuli with positive or negative value histories often capture attention involuntarily. The authors examined how these processes compete for control of posterior neural oscillations, specifically in the alpha (8–12 Hz) and gamma (40–100 Hz) bands, to determine if they share or utilize distinct neural pathways. The researchers employed a two-phase experimental design with 26 participants. In the training phase, participants learned associations between Chinese characters and outcomes: positive (reward), negative (punishment), or neutral. In the test phase, participants performed a spatial cueing task while undergoing magnetoencephalography (MEG) recordings. They were instructed to attend to a cued stimulus and detect contrast changes, orthogonalizing attention from value, as the financial consequences of the stimuli remained active regardless of task performance. This design allowed for the independent manipulation of attention direction and stimulus valence/salience. The results revealed dissociable effects of value associations on alpha and gamma oscillations. Alpha-band lateralization, which typically reflects voluntary attention, was modulated by stimulus salience regardless of valence. Specifically, attending to salient targets (both positive and negative) increased alpha lateralization compared to neutral targets, while ignoring salient distractors decreased it. In contrast, gamma-band lateralization was unaffected by target value or salience. However, gamma lateralization was specifically abolished when negative distractors were present, a pattern not observed with positive or neutral distractors. Source analysis using beamforming indicated that both attentional and value-related effects originated in the occipital cortex, with alpha effects localized to the middle occipital region and gamma effects to the superior occipital region. These findings suggest that posterior cortical oscillations support complementary mechanisms for processing attention and value. Alpha oscillations appear to integrate the salience of stimuli, enhancing processing for attended salient targets and suppressing ignored salient distractors, irrespective of whether the value is positive or negative. Gamma oscillations, however, show a specific sensitivity to negative distractors, potentially reflecting a distinct mechanism for processing threatening or punishing information. This dissociation implies that the brain utilizes separate neural processes, reflected in different frequency bands, to manage voluntary attention while remaining sensitive to valuable environmental features.

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• attention selective divided