Dataset Information

Alertness and Visual Attention Impact Different Aspects of the Optokinetic Reflex.

ABSTRACT:

Purpose

Assessing visual attention and alertness is of great importance in visual and cognitive neuroscience, providing objective measures valuable for both researchers and clinicians. This study investigates how the optokinetic response differs between levels of visual attention in healthy adults while controlling for alertness.

Methods

Twelve healthy subjects (8 men and 4 women; mean age = 33 ± 9.36) with intact gaze-stability, visual acuity, and binocularity were recruited. Subjects viewed a rotating visual scene provoking torsional optokinetic nystagmus (OKN) while wearing a video eye tracker in a seated head-fixed position. Tasks requiring focused, neutral, and divided visual attention were issued to each subject and the OKN was recorded. Pupil sizes were monitored as a proxy for alertness.

Results

Pupil dilation was increased for both focused and divided visual attention. The number of nystagmus beats was highest for the focused condition and lowest for the divided attentional task. OKN gain was increased during both focused and divided attention. The distribution of nystagmus beats over time showed that only focused attention produced a reliable adaptation of the OKN.

Conclusions

Results consequently indicate that OKN frequency is adaptive to a viewer's level of visual attention, whereas OKN gain is influenced by alertness levels. This pattern offers insight into the neural processes integrating visual input with reflexive motor responses. For example, it contextualizes why attention to visual stimuli can cause dizziness, as the OKN frequency reflects activity of the velocity storage mechanism. Additionally, the OKN could offer a possible venue for differentiating between visual attention and alertness during psychometric testing.

SUBMITTER: Frattini D

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8543398 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

Alertness and Visual Attention Impact Different Aspects of the Optokinetic Reflex.

Frattini Davide D Wibble Tobias T

Investigative ophthalmology & visual science 20211001 13

<h4>Purpose</h4>Assessing visual attention and alertness is of great importance in visual and cognitive neuroscience, providing objective measures valuable for both researchers and clinicians. This study investigates how the optokinetic response differs between levels of visual attention in healthy adults while controlling for alertness.<h4>Methods</h4>Twelve healthy subjects (8 men and 4 women; mean age = 33 ± 9.36) with intact gaze-stability, visual acuity, and binocularity were recruited. Sub ...[more]

PMID: 34668924

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Project description:In everyday life, information from different cognitive domains-such as visuospatial attention, alertness and inhibition-needs to be integrated between different brain regions. Early models suggested that completely segregated brain networks control these three cognitive domains. However, more recent accounts, mainly based on neuroimaging data in healthy participants, indicate that different tasks lead to specific patterns of activation within the same, higher-order and 'multiple-demand' network. If so, then a lesion to critical substrates of this common network should determine a concomitant impairment in all three cognitive domains. The aim of the present study was to critically investigate this hypothesis, i.e. to identify focal stroke lesions within the network that can concomitantly affect visuospatial attention, alertness and inhibition. We studied an unselected sample of 60 first-ever right-hemispheric, subacute stroke patients using a data-driven, bottom-up approach. Patients performed 12 standardized neuropsychological and oculomotor tests, four per cognitive domain. A principal component analysis revealed a strong relationship between all three cognitive domains: 10 of 12 tests loaded on a first, common component. Analysis of the neuroanatomical lesion correlates using different approaches (i.e. voxel-based and tractwise lesion-symptom mapping, disconnectome maps) provided convergent evidence on the association between severe impairment of this common component and lesions at the intersection of superior longitudinal fasciculus II and III, frontal aslant tract and, to a lesser extent, the putamen and inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus. Moreover, patients with a lesion involving this region were significantly more impaired in daily living cognition, which provides an ecological validation of our results. A probabilistic functional atlas of the multiple-demand network was performed to confirm the potential relationship between patients' lesion substrates and observed cognitive impairments as a function of the multiple-demand network connectivity disruption. These findings show, for the first time, that a lesion to a specific white matter crossroad can determine a concurrent breakdown in all three considered cognitive domains. Our results support the multiple-demand network model, proposing that different cognitive operations depend on specific collaborators and their interaction, within the same underlying neural network. Our findings also extend this hypothesis by showing (i) the contribution of superior longitudinal fasciculus and frontal aslant tract to the multiple-demand network; and (ii) a critical neuroanatomical intersection, crossed by a vast amount of long-range white matter tracts, many of which interconnect cortical areas of the multiple-demand network. The vulnerability of this crossroad to stroke has specific cognitive and clinical consequences; this has the potential to influence future rehabilitative approaches.

Dataset Information

Alertness and Visual Attention Impact Different Aspects of the Optokinetic Reflex.

Purpose

Methods

Results

Conclusions

Publications

Alertness and Visual Attention Impact Different Aspects of the Optokinetic Reflex.

Similar Datasets

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