Transient Attention Gates Access Consciousness: Coupling N2pc and P3 Latencies Using Dynamic Time Warping.
The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience June 26, 2024 Mahan Hosseini, Alon Zivony, Martin Eimer et al. 5 citations
The N2pc and P3 brain signals, which index selective attention and conscious awareness respectively, are temporally linked. In an experiment with 23 participants monitoring rapid letter and digit streams, dynamic time warping analysis showed that the latencies of these two signals correlated in time, both when participants correctly reported a target digit and when they mistakenly reported a nearby distractor. The link was weaker on distractor intrusion trials. The findings clarify the relationship between attention and access consciousness, and the novel method offers a general approach for assessing temporal links between any two time-series processes.