Estimating voluntary and involuntary attention in bistable visual perception: A MEG study

Abstract

We introduce a method for measuring human attention when performing a visual task consisting in different interpretations of a bistable image. The Necker cube with flickering faces was presented to nine conditionally healthy volunteers. The pixels intensity in the front and rear cube faces were modulated by a sinusoidal signal with 6.67-Hz (60/9) and 8.57-Hz (60/7) frequencies, respectively. The tags of these frequencies and their second harmonics were clearly identified in the average Fourier spectra of the magnetoencephalographic (MEG) data recorded from the occipital cortex. In the first part of the experiment, the subjects were asked to voluntary control their attention by interpreting the cube orientation as either left- or right-orientated. Accordingly, we observed the dominance of the corresponding spectral component and voluntary attention performance was measured. In the second part of the experiment, the subjects were just asked to observe the cube image without any effort in its interpretation. The alternation of the dominant spectral energies at the second harmonic tag frequencies was treated as changes in the cube orientation. Based on the results of the first experimental stage and using wavelet analysis, we developed a novel method which allowed us to identify currently perceived cube orientations. Finally, we characterized involuntary attention using the dominance time distribution and related it to voluntary attention performance and brain noise. In particular, we have shown that higher attention performance is associated with stronger brain noise.