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      Spatial Attention and the Effects of Frontoparietal Alpha Band Stimulation

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          Abstract

          A frontoparietal network has long been implicated in top-down control of attention. Recent studies have suggested that this network might communicate through coherence in the alpha band. Here we aimed to test the effect of coherent alpha (8–12 Hz) stimulation on the frontoparietal network. To this end, we recorded behavioral performance and electroencephalography (EEG) data while participants were engaged in a spatial attention task. Furthermore, participants received transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) over the right frontal and parietal cortex, which oscillated coherently in-phase within the alpha band. Compared to a group of participants that received sham stimulation, we found that coherent frontoparietal alpha band stimulation altered a behavioral spatial attention bias. Neurally, the groups showed hemispheric-specific differences in alpha coherence between the frontal and parietal-occipital cortex. These results provide preliminary evidence that alpha coherence in the frontoparietal network might play a role in top-down control of spatial attention.

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          Most cited references27

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          The attention system of the human brain.

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            Top-down influences on visual processing.

            Re-entrant or feedback pathways between cortical areas carry rich and varied information about behavioural context, including attention, expectation, perceptual tasks, working memory and motor commands. Neurons receiving such inputs effectively function as adaptive processors that are able to assume different functional states according to the task being executed. Recent data suggest that the selection of particular inputs, representing different components of an association field, enable neurons to take on different functional roles. In this Review, we discuss the various top-down influences exerted on the visual cortical pathways and highlight the dynamic nature of the receptive field, which allows neurons to carry information that is relevant to the current perceptual demands.
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              Entrainment of brain oscillations by transcranial alternating current stimulation.

              Novel methods for neuronal entrainment [1-4] provide the unique opportunity to modulate perceptually relevant brain oscillations [5, 6] in a frequency-specific manner and to study their functional impact on distinct cognitive functions. Recently, evidence has emerged that tACS (transcranial alternating current stimulation) can modulate cortical oscillations [7-9]. However, the study of electrophysiological effects has been hampered so far by the absence of concurrent electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings. Here, we applied 10 Hz tACS to the parieto-occipital cortex and utilized simultaneous EEG recordings to study neuronal entrainment during stimulation. We pioneer a novel approach for simultaneous tACS-EEG recordings and successfully separate stimulation artifacts from ongoing and event-related cortical activity. Our results reveal that 10 Hz tACS increases parieto-occipital alpha activity and synchronizes cortical oscillators with similar intrinsic frequencies to the entrainment frequency. Additionally, we demonstrate that tACS modulates target detection performance in a phase-dependent fashion highlighting the causal role of alpha oscillations for visual perception. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Journal
                Front Hum Neurosci
                Front Hum Neurosci
                Front. Hum. Neurosci.
                Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
                Frontiers Media S.A.
                1662-5161
                24 January 2017
                2016
                : 10
                : 658
                Affiliations
                [1] 1Departments of Neurology, Physiology and Psychiatry, University of California, San Francisco San Francisco, CA, USA
                [2] 2Neuroscape, University of California, San Francisco San Francisco, CA, USA
                [3] 3Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam Amsterdam, Netherlands
                Author notes

                Edited by: Edmund C. Lalor, University of Rochester, USA

                Reviewed by: Niko Busch, University of Münster, Germany; Gerard Martin Loughnane, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland

                *Correspondence: Martine R. van Schouwenburg m.r.vanschouwenburg@ 123456uva.nl
                Article
                10.3389/fnhum.2016.00658
                5259681
                28174529
                741a0a0e-1318-4a92-8db0-bb2e212cdf21
                Copyright © 2017 van Schouwenburg, Zanto and Gazzaley.

                This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution and reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

                History
                : 28 June 2016
                : 12 December 2016
                Page count
                Figures: 3, Tables: 2, Equations: 22, References: 45, Pages: 11, Words: 8248
                Funding
                Funded by: National Institutes of Health 10.13039/100000002
                Award ID: R01MH096861
                Categories
                Neuroscience
                Original Research

                Neurosciences
                alpha oscillations,coherence,connectivity,transcranial alternating current stimulation,visual attention

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