Predicting attention fluctuations and their consequences for memory from functional brain connectivity

通过功能性大脑连接预测注意力波动及其对记忆的影响

• 批准号: 2043740
• 负责人: Monica Rosenberg
• 金额: $ 50万
• 依托单位: University of Chicago
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2021-05-01 至 2024-04-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2043740&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Predicting; attention; fluctuations; their; consequences

Sustained attention is critical for safely and successfully completing everyday tasks, like driving a car or listening to a presentation. Our ability to maintain focus, however, fluctuates over time when we experience mind wandering, distraction, boredom, or depletion (i.e., feeling like we’re “out of gas” when we try to sustain attention). Resulting attention failures can have deleterious consequences for ongoing behavior, such as a lapse in attention causing us to miss our exit on the highway. Such failures may also impact later memory, for example, leading to poor performance on tests of material we encountered while being inattentive. Although fluctuations in attention are pervasive, researchers lack a way to track changes in attention over time, predict attention lapses, and characterize the consequences of attention fluctuations for subsequent memory in a variety of situations, such as watching a lecture or performing an attention task (e.g., a task that requires a person to monitor a stream of images and detect a rare target picture). This project will use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data to predict attention fluctuations during psychological and “naturalistic” tasks—like watching movies and listening to stories—and ask whether fMRI activity signatures of attentional states impact what people go on to remember at a later time. This work may help us better track attention changes and predict attention failures in lab-based and real-world contexts and will lead to a better understanding of the manner in which how we attend affects what we remember.Recent work suggests that patterns of functional brain connectivity predict a person’s overall ability to sustain attention. Functional connectivity is measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and reflects statistical dependence between the fMRI signal time-courses in two different brain regions. When regions are said to be strongly functionally connected, activity in those regions tends to increase and decrease in sync, whereas activity in regions that are weakly functionally connected varies out of sync. The proposed project asks whether changes in functional connectivity from one moment to the next—that is, functional connectivity dynamics—reflect changes in the degree to which a person is attending to the task at hand. The project will also characterize how these fluctuating attentional states affect ongoing behavior and later memory. Specifically, the investigators will collect fMRI data during three different types of scans. During each scan, volunteers will be asked to either perform attention tasks in which they press a button in response to certain pictures that appear in a stream of images on a screen, rest quietly, or watch movies or listen to stories—the latter of which more closely mirror real-world situations in which we commonly experience attention fluctuations. The researchers will ask three primary questions. First, how do functional connectivity dynamics (measured by calculating functional connectivity strength in short time windows during fMRI scans) relate to attention dynamics during the tasks, rest period, and narratives? Second, how overlapping or distinct are brain networks in which the strength of activity predicts overall sustained attention and attention fluctuations in different contexts (i.e., task performance, rest, and visual and auditory narrative perception)? Finally, how are brain signatures of attentional states during encoding of information related to later memory performance, including recognition of the images encountered during the attention tasks and verbal recall of the movie and story narratives? This work may improve our ability to track changes in focus over time and predict attention failures in experimental and naturalistic contexts. It will provide insights into the functional architecture of sustained attention itself and inform us about the relationships between sustained attention and memory.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

持续的关注对于安全并成功完成每天的任务至关重要，例如开车或听演示。然而，当我们体验思维徘徊，分心，无聊或部署时，我们保持专注的能力会随着时间的流逝而波动（即，当我们试图维持注意力时，感觉就像我们在“无天然气”）。导致的注意力失败可能会删除持续行为的后果，例如注意力的流失导致我们错过了高速公路上的出口。例如，这种故障也可能影响以后的记忆，例如，在不专心时遇到的材料测试的性能不佳。尽管注意力的波动普遍存在，但研究人员缺乏跟踪注意力随着时间的关注，预测关注的失误，并表征注意力波动在多种情况下随后的记忆的后果，例如观察讲座或执行注意力任务（例如，该项目都会使用功能性的磁性图像（fmri folduction flow）来预测注意力（例如，fmri flow flow）聆听故事 - 询问注意力状态的fMRI活动是否会影响人们在以后的工作，这可能会有助于我们更好地跟踪注意力的变化，并预测基于实验室和现实世界的环境中的注意力失败，并且会更好地理解我们对我们所记住的方式的更好的理解。 （fMRI）并反映了两个不同大脑区域的fMRI信号时间表之间的统计依赖性。当据说区域在功能上有很强的连接时，这些区域的活性往往会增加和减少同步，而在功能弱连接的区域的活动中，各种无同步连接。拟议的项目询问功能连接性的变化是否从一个时刻到另一个时刻（即功能连接动力学）是否反射了一个人参与手头任务的程度的变化。该项目还将表征这些不断变化的注意状态如何影响持续的行为和以后的记忆。具体而言，研究人员将在三种不同类型的扫描中收集fMRI数据。在每次扫描过程中，都会要求志愿者执行注意力任务，以便他们按下按钮，以响应某些图片出现在屏幕上的图像，安静地休息或观看电影或听故事的某些图片，后者更紧密地反映了现实世界中的情况，在这种情况下，我们通常会体验到注意力的关注波动。研究人员将提出三个主要问题。首先，功能连接动力学（通过在fMRI扫描期间在短时间窗口中计算功能连接强度来衡量）与任务，休息期和叙述期间的注意力动态有关？其次，在不同情况下（即任务绩效，休息，视觉和听觉叙事感知），活动强度预测活动强度预测活动的强度总体持续关注和注意力波动的重叠或不同是如何重叠的？最后，在编码与以后的记忆表现有关的信息时，注意状态的大脑签名如何，包括对注意力任务期间遇到的图像的识别以及电影和故事叙事的口头回忆？这项工作可能会提高我们跟踪随时间变化并预测实验和自然主义环境中注意力失败的能力。它将提供有关持续关注本身的功能架构的见解，并向我们告知持续关注和记忆之间的关系。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识分子优点和更广泛的影响审查标准来通过评估来诚实地支持支持。

项目成果

Functional connectome stability and optimality are markers of cognitive performance

• DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhac396
• 发表时间: 2022-11-19
• 期刊: CEREBRAL CORTEX
• 影响因子: 3.7
• 作者: Corriveau, Anna;Yoo, Kwangsun;Rosenberg, Monica D.
• 通讯作者: Rosenberg, Monica D.

Predicting visual memory across images and within individuals

预测跨图像和个体内部的视觉记忆

• DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2022.105201
• 发表时间: 2022
• 期刊: Cognition
• 影响因子: 3.4
• 作者: Wakeland-Hart, Cheyenne D.;Cao, Steven A.;deBettencourt, Megan T.;Bainbridge, Wilma A.;Rosenberg, Monica D.
• 通讯作者: Rosenberg, Monica D.

Neural signatures of attentional engagement during narratives and its consequences for event memory

叙事过程中注意力参与的神经特征及其对事件记忆的影响

• DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2021905118
• 发表时间: 2021
• 期刊: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
• 作者: Song, Hayoung;Finn, Emily S.;Rosenberg, Monica D.
• 通讯作者: Rosenberg, Monica D.

Differences in the functional brain architecture of sustained attention and working memory in youth and adults

青少年和成人持续注意力和工作记忆的功能性大脑结构差异

• DOI: 10.15154/1528288
• 发表时间: 2023
• 期刊: PLoS Biology
• 影响因子: 9.8
• 作者: Kardan, O.